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DIW Discussion Papers 475 / 2005
Much progress has been made in recent years on developing and applying a direct measure of utility using survey questions on subjective well-being. In this paper we explore whether this new type of measurement can be fruitfully applied to the study of interdependent utility in general, and altruism between parents and children in particular. We introduce an appropriate econometric methodology and, ...
2005| Johannes Schwarze, Rainer Winkelmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 474 / 2005
The study examines the geographic mobility of dual-earner couples using data from the German Socio-economic Panel. Although the predictions of the microeconomic family migration model are by and large met, gender ideology also plays a significant role in the explanation of family migration behavior. Splitting the sample of dual-earners into traditional and egalitarian couples reveals that job-related ...
2005| Hendrik Jürges
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DIW Discussion Papers 473 / 2005
Die amtliche Statistik weist für die letzten Jahre einen steigenden Anteil an kinderlosen Frauen aus. Die Kinderlosigkeit von Männern blieb bisher weitgehend unberücksichtigt. Ziel dieses Beitrages ist es, die sozialstrukturellen Rahmenbedingungen unter denen eine Familiengründung ausbleibt oder aufgeschoben wird für beide Geschlechter aufzuzeigen. Zu diesem Zweck werden ausgewählte Geburtskohorten ...
2005| Christian Schmitt, Ulrike Winkelmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 472 / 2005
In the year 2000, the German government passed the most ambitious tax reform in postwar German history aiming at a significant tax relief for households. An important aim of this tax reform was to improve work incentives and, thereby, foster employment. Drawing on data of the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze the work incentive and employment effects of this reform on the basis of a behavioral ...
2005| Peter Haan, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 471 / 2005
This paper addresses the issue of estimating and forecasting productivity growth trends in the US and Germany from the perspective of a business cycle researcher who wants to use the available information in time series of aggregate labor productivity to derive a model for short- and/or long-term forecasts of labour productivity. We will use stability tests and a deterministic model with structural ...
2005| Georg Erber, Ulrich Fritsche
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DIW Discussion Papers 470 / 2005
The extension of subsidized child care is currently on the top of the political agenda in Germany. In this paper the excess demand for subsidized child care slots is estimated using a partial observability model in the style of Abowd and Farber (1982). The results show that more than 50 percent of children aged 0-3 are queuing for child care slots, whereas only 10 percent of children aged 4-6 years ...
2005| Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 469 / 2005
Reliable information on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is rare and costly for financial intermediaries. To compensate for this, relationship banking is often considered as the appropriate lending technique in the case of SMEs. In this paper we offer a theoretical model to analyze the pricing behavior of banks in a Bertrand competition framework with monitoring costs. We show that the lack ...
2005| Timo Baas, Mechthild Schrooten
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DIW Discussion Papers 468 / 2005
Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird die Entwicklung in den Kriminalitätseinstellungen in Deutschland seit den 70er Jahren anhand allgemeiner Bevölkerungsumfragen nachgezeichnet. Entgegen der weit verbreiteten Meinung zeigen die Sekundäranalysen insgesamt einen besonders seit Mitte der 90er Jahre zu beobachtenden Bedeutungsrückgang hinsichtlich verschiedener Einschätzungen zur Kriminalität. Zudem liegen sowohl ...
2005| Jörg Dittmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 467 / 2005
The purpose of this paper is to set EUROMOD - the EU-wide tax and benefit model - in the context of the development of EU social policy. It explores the relation between the rapidly evolving EU social inclusion process and investment in European social science infrastructure. In so doing, I look mainly to the future, but I would like to begin in Sections 1 and 2 with the historical background. It is ...
2005| Anthony Barnes Atkinson
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DIW Discussion Papers 466 / 2005
Leisure is an important domain of life in modern societies. To find out who participates in what leisure activities, two different theoretical approaches are available. Classical inequality theories posit that differences in leisure activities are strongly connected with social position. In contrast, lifestyle theory concepts argue that socio-economic differences have lost their impact with the overall ...
2005| Bettina Isengard
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DIW Discussion Papers 465 / 2005
We use a sample of 18 countries to study what variables have a significant impact on an individual's decision to start a new business and classification and regression trees for an accurate interpretation of the data. Our results support existing literature suggesting the existence of strong country effects. In addition, we find strong evidence that perceptual variables, such as one's belief about ...
2005| Philipp Köllinger, Maria Minniti, Christian Schade
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DIW Discussion Papers 464 / 2005
This paper argues that - in contrast to an often expressed view - the formation of larger and more powerful buyers need not reduce welfare by stifling suppliers' incentives. If contracts are determined in bilateral negotiations, the presence of larger buyers may both increase suppliers' incentives for product improvement and induce suppliers to choose a more efficient technology. The paper also isolates ...
2005| Roman Inderst, Christian Wey
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DIW Discussion Papers 463 / 2004
While there has been a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from multinationals this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. The innovation of this paper is to investigate whether spillovers occur via worker mobility. We use data on whether or not the owner of a domestic firm has previous experience in a multinational, and relate this ...
2004| Holger Görg, Eric Strobl
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DIW Discussion Papers 462 / 2004
In October 2003, the European Union introduced a Directive which widens the scope of the EU's minimum taxation system from mineral oils to all energy products including coal, natural gas and electricity. It aims at reducing distortions that currently exist between Member States as well as between energy products. In addition, it increases previous minimum tax rates and thus the incentive to use energy ...
2004| Michael Kohlhaas, Katja Schumacher, Jochen Diekmann, Dieter Schumacher, Martin Cames
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DIW Discussion Papers 461 / 2004
I propose an econometric model that improves upon existing methods of estimating the natural rate of unemployment (NAIRU) by using information contained in the trend of productivity growth. My approach enhances the recently proposed model of Staiger, Stock and Watson (1997) in several respects. Statistically speaking, the method substantially shrinks the width of the 95% confidence interval, performs ...
2004| Jiri Slacalek
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DIW Discussion Papers 460 / 2004
European Union economies are pressed by (i) a demographic change that induces population ageing and a decline of the workforce, and (ii) a split labour market that is characterized by high levels of unemployment for low -skilled people and a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers. This lack of flexible high-skilled workers and the aging process has created the image of an immobile labour force and ...
2004| Klaus F. Zimmermann
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DIW Discussion Papers 459 / 2004
In der wissenschaftlichen ebenso wie der öffentlichen Diskussion spielt die Frage, wie sich der Arbeitsmarkt im Zuge zunehmender Flexibilisierungsanforderungen an Betriebe und Arbeitnehmer gewandelt haben, eine zentrale Rolle. Dabei wird unter anderem auch angenommen, dass in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten die Beschäftigungssicherheit von Arbeitnehmern kontinuierlich abgenommen habe. Unter dem Eindruck ...
2004| Marcel Erlinghagen
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DIW Discussion Papers 458 / 2004
This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in production-function estimates and generate testable hypotheses on the forces that shape infrastructure policy. ...
2004| Olivier Cadot, Lars-Hendrik Röller, Andreas Stephan
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DIW Discussion Papers 457 / 2004
Using micro-level panel data of about 35,000 firms from the German Cost Structure Census, we analyze the differences of technical efficiency across industries. Technical efficiency is estimated by firms' fixed effects. One striking result is that the distribution of technical efficiency across industries is positively skewed. This is because the efficiency distribution is truncated at the lower end ...
2004| Michael Fritsch, Andreas Stephan
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DIW Discussion Papers 456 / 2004
This paper analyses public policy choices in the security economy from an economic perspective. It discusses the role of public goods for national and global security and identifies the importance of the first- and second-order indirect effects of insecurity on economic activity, which include the behavioural responses of agents and the government to security measures, akin to such effects in insurance ...
2004| Tilman Brück