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Qualitative versus Quantitative External Information for Proxy Vector Autoregressive Analysis

A major challenge for proxy vector autoregressive analysis is the construction of a suitable external instrument variable or proxy for identifying a shock of interest. Some authors construct sophisticated proxies that account for the dating and size of the shock while other authors consider simpler versions that use only the dating and signs of particular shocks. It is shown that such qualitative (sign-)proxies ...

What's in a Word? Just vs. Fair vs. Appropriate Earnings for Self and Others

Despite Rawls’ famous call to distinguish between justice and fairness, these and other justice-related words often seem to be used interchangeably by both ordinary people and justice researchers. Based on a survey-embedded question wording experiment (N = 4534) fielded in Germany as part of the GESIS Panel, we explore the effects of three justice words— “just,” “fair,” and “appropriate”—on the sense ...

Carbon pricing in a risky world

Inflation in the Euro Area: Factors Mostly Have Only a Temporary Effect, but Risk of Prolonged Elevated Inflation Remains

Headline inflation in the euro area jumped to more than three percent in the summer after years of relatively low inflation rates well below the target of close to but below two percent set by the ECB until July 2021. One of the main reasons for the rise in inflation is the increase in energy prices since the beginning of 2021. However, there are further indications that inflation in the euro area ...

Energy Transition Metals

The energy transition requires substantial amounts of metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium. Are these metals a key bottleneck? We identify metal-specific demand shocks, estimate supply elasticities and pin down the price impact of the energy transition in a structural scenario analysis. Metal prices would reach historical peaks for an unprecedented, sustained period in a net-zero emissions ...

Personality Characteristics and the Decision to Hire

As the policy debate on entrepreneurship increasingly centers on firm growth in terms of job creation, it is important to understand whether the personality of entrepreneurs drives the first hiring in their firms. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze to what extent personality traits influence the probability of becoming an employer. The results indicate that personality matters. ...

Who Teaches the Teachers? A RCT of Peer-To-Peer Observation and Feedback in 181 Schools

This paper evaluates a widely used, low stakes, teacher peer-to-peer observation and feedback program under Randomized Control Trial (RCT) conditions. Half of 181 volunteer primary schools in England were randomly selected to participate in a two-year program in which three fourth and fifth grade teachers observed each other. We find that two cohorts of students taught by treated teachers perform no ...

Exposure to Inequality May Cause Under-provision of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence

Economic inequality is rising globally and due to developments in information technologies and globalization, nowadays individuals are more exposed to such an inequality than ever. Recent studies show that exposure to inequality may shape economic decisions. In this article, we test whether contributions in the public goods game are sensitive to information about inequality of personal benefits between ...

Joint Economic Forecast: Crisis is gradually being overcome – align actions to lower growth

The Corona pandemic still shapes the economic situation in Germany. A complete normalisation of contact-intensive activities is not to be ex­pected in the short term. In addition, supply bottlenecks are ham­pering manufacturing for the time being. The German economy will reach nor­mal capacity utilisation in the course of 2022. In their autumn report, the leading economic research institutes ...

The Leniency Rule Revisited: Experiments on Cartel Formation with Open Communication

The experimental literature on antitrust enforcement provides robust evidence that communication plays an important role for the formation and stability of cartels. We extend these studies through a design that distinguishes between innocuous communication and communication about a cartel, sanctioning only the latter. To this aim, we introduce a participant in the role of the competition authority, ...