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DIW Discussion Papers 1009 / 2010
We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We find that country-specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Roman Matousek, Chris Stewart
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DIW Discussion Papers 1008 / 2010
We analyze the bargaining problem of an incumbent firm and a union when the wage contract becomes generally binding. Our main application relates to competition among operators of mail delivery networks. We describe the Deutsche Post case which highlights the raising rivals' costs incentive and its consequences resulting from labor laws that make collective agreements generally binding. We show that ...
2010| Sven Heitzler, Christian Wey
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DIW Discussion Papers 1007 / 2010
While social relationships play an important role for individuals to cope with missing market institutions, they also limit individuals' range of trading partners. This paper aims at understanding the determinants of trust at various social distances when information asymmetries are present. Among participants from an informal housing area in Cairo we find that the increase in trust following a reduction ...
2010| Christine Binzel, Dietmar Fehr
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DIW Discussion Papers 1006 / 2010
This paper examines the degree of persistence in the volatility of financial time series using a Long Memory Stochastic Volatility (LMSV) model. Specifically, it employs a Gaussian semiparametric (or local Whittle) estimator of the memory parameter, based on the frequency domain, proposed by Robinson (1995a), and shown by Arteche (2004) to be consistent and asymptotically normal in the context of signal ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1005 / 2010
Remittances from Germany are substantial. Cross-border transfers to family and friendship networks outside Germany are not only made by foreigners. Many naturalized migrants send money home as well. Here, we focus on international networks and gender-specific determinants of remittances from the senders' perspective, based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2006. ...
2010| Elke Holst, Andrea Schäfer, Mechthild Schrooten
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DIW Discussion Papers 1004 / 2010
In this paper, we compare the distribution of price changes between collusive and noncollusive periods for ten major cartels. The first moments focus on previous research. We extend the discussion to the third (skewness) and fourth (kurtosis) moments. However, none of the above descriptive statistics can be considered as a robust test allowing a differentiation between competition and cartel. Therefore, ...
2010| Korbinian von Blanckenburg, Alexander Geist, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1003 / 2010
Die Konsolidierung der Staatsfinanzen nach der gegenwärtigen Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise wird eines der zentralen wirtschaftspolitischen Themen der nächsten Jahre sein: Die Regelungen zur "Schuldenbremse" sehen für den Bundeshaushalt bis 2016 einen annähernd ausgeglichenen Haushalt vor, und auch die Länderhaushalte sollen bis 2020 weitgehend konsolidiert werden. Dadurch ergibt sich ein erheblicher ...
2010| Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1002 / 2010
A strong private equity market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in private equity across European countries. We investigate the macro-determinants of private equity investment in Europe, focusing on the comparison between CEE and Western European countries. Our estimations are ...
2010| Kerstin Bernoth, Roberta Colavecchio, Magdolna Sass
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DIW Discussion Papers 1001 / 2010
Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass sich in den Spitzengremien der großen Unternehmen bestehende Chancenungleichheiten zwischen den Geschlechtern auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und in der Gesellschaft kristallisieren. In den Vorständen der größten privaten Unternehmen in Deutschland besteht eine männliche Monokultur. In den Aufsichtsräten wird sie nur deshalb etwas gemildert, weil die Arbeitnehmervertretungen rund ...
2010| Elke Holst, Anita Wiemer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1000 / 2010
In view of rising wage and income inequality, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of a nationwide legal minimum wage of 7.50 € per hour on the basis of a microsimulation model which accounts for the complex interactions between individual wages, the tax-benefit system and net household incomes, also ...
2010| Kai-Uwe Müller, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 999 / 2010
This paper investigates the effect of ethnicity on time spent on overlapped household production, work and leisure activities employing the 2000-2001 UK Time Use Survey. We find that, unconditionally, white females manage to "stretch" their time the most by an additional 233 minutes per day and non-white men "stretch" their time the least. The three secondary activities that are most often combined ...
2010| Anzelika Zaiceva, Klaus F. Zimmermann
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DIW Discussion Papers 998 / 2010
This study used data from the German Socio-economic Panel to examine gender differences in the extent to which self-reported subjective well-being was associated with occupying a high-level managerial position in the labour market, compared with employment in nonleadership, non-high-level managerial positions, unemployment, and non-labour market participation. Our results indicated that a clear hierarchy ...
2010| Eileen Trzcinski, Elke Holst
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DIW Discussion Papers 997 / 2010
In this paper, we investigate whether the Google search activity can help in nowcasting the year-on-year growth rates of monthly US private consumption using a real-time data set. The Google-based forecasts are compared to those based on a benchmark AR(1) model and the models including the consumer surveys and financial indicators. According to the Diebold-Mariano test of equal predictive ability, ...
2010| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Maximilian Podstawski, Boriss Siliverstovs
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DIW Discussion Papers 996 / 2010
The ECB has accepted increasing amounts of rubbish collateral since the crisis started leading to exposure to serious private sector credit risk (i.e. default risk) on its collateralised lending and reverse operations ("repo"). This has led some commentators to argue that the ECB needs "fiscal back-up" to cover any potential losses to be able to continue pursuing price stability. This Brief argues ...
2010| Ansgar Belke
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DIW Discussion Papers 995 / 2010
We develop a roadmap of how the ECB should further reduce the volume of money (money supply) and roll back credit easing in order to prevent inflation. The exits should be step-by-step rather than one-off. Communicating about the exit strategy must be an integral part of the exit strategy. Price stability should take precedence in all decisions. Due to vagabonding global liquidity, there is a strong ...
2010| Ansgar Belke
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DIW Discussion Papers 994 / 2010
Better understanding the innovative process of renewable energy technologies is important for tackling climate change. Though concentrating solar power is receiving growing interest, innovation studies so far have explored innovative activity in solar technologies in general, ignoring the major differences between solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. This study relies on patent data to ...
2010| Frauke G. Braun, Liz Hooper, Robert Wand, Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 993 / 2010
This paper studies technological change in renewable energies, providing empirical evidence on the determinants of innovative activity with a special emphasis on the role of knowledge spillovers. We investigate two major renewable energy technologies - wind and solar - across a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1978 to 2004. Spillovers may occur at the national level, either within the same ...
2010| Frauke G. Braun, Jens Schmidt-Ehmcke, Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 992 / 2010
This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's sixteen federal states. We exploit this variation in the timing of state bans to identify the effect that smoke-free policies had on individuals' smoking propensity and smoking intensity. Using rich longitudinal ...
2010| Silke Anger, Michael Kvasnicka, Thomas Siedler
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DIW Discussion Papers 991 / 2010
Population surveys around the world face the problem of declining cooperation and participation rates of respondents. Not only can item nonresponse and unit nonresponse impair important outcome measures for inequality research such as total household disposable income; there is also a further case of missingness confronting household panel surveys that potentially biases results. The approach commonly ...
2010| Joachim R. Frick, Markus M. Grabka, Olaf Groh-Samberg
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DIW Discussion Papers 990 / 2010
The paper investigates whether the presence and tenure of Private Equity (PE) investment in European companies improves their performance. Previous studies documented the unambiguous merit of a buyout during the 1980s and 1990s for listed firms in the US and UK markets. This study analyzes such influences in both listed and unlisted European firms during 2002-2007. Our analysis suggests that shortterm ...
2010| Oleg Badunenko, Christopher F. Baum, Dorothea Schäfer