Energy prices have risen sharply as a result of the coronavirus pandemic as well as the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022. The resulting consumer price inflation is forcing the European Central Bank (ECB) to act in accordance with its mandate. However, the ECB expresses doubts that it will be able to have an impact on the price increases. As this Weekly Report based on an analysis of structural ...
Health shocks limit individuals’ participation in the labor market and pose a major risk to household welfare. In this paper, we derive two novel health shock indicators using machine learning based on sick days and hospitalizations: one for transitory and one for persistent shocks. In an event study framework, we show their respective effects on employment, yearly working hours, and labor earnings, ...
Survey evidence shows that the magnitude of the tax liability plays a role in value judgements about which groups deserve tax breaks. We demonstrate that the German tax-transfer system conflicts with a welfarist inequality averse social planner. It is consistent with a planner who is averse to both inequality and high tax liabilities. The tax-transfer schedule reflects non-welfarist value judgements ...
The outbreak of COVID‐19 has sparked a sudden demand for fast, frequent and accurate data on the societal impact of the pandemic. This demand has highlighted a divide in survey data collection: Most probability‐based social surveys, which can deliver the necessary data quality to allow valid inference to the general population, are slow, infrequent and ill‐equipped to survey people during a lockdown. ...
The European Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) is the key policy tool of the EU to reduce GHG emissions. To prevent carbon leakage, most of the emission permits have been allocated for free in the industrial sector. A carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) will be introduced end of 2023 as an alternative carbon leakage protection instrument. However, the CBAM will only gradually replace free...
This paper empirically analyses the impact of government ownership on competition in monopoly and duopoly markets. We use the European Airline Industry as a laboratory. In our empirical strategy we exploit two sources of exogenous variations that allow us to cleanly filter out the effect of government ownership on the likelihood of exit. First, we study government ownership that was triggered by a...
Antibiotics are effective in treating bacterial infections. However, the excessive usage of antibiotics leads to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which significantly reduces their effectiveness. Current strategies to address antibiotic resistance mainly target primary care physicians, who serve as the gatekeepers of antibiotic prescriptions in many countries. Therefore, it is...
