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Housing Market and Sentiment Analysis

The housing issue is one of the hottest social problems. It is widely debated by the society. These debates contain a large subjective component. In addition, they are expected to correlate with the phases of the housing cycle. One of the most visible and durable manifestationsof these debates are the media items. In this study, we aim at assessing the sentiment of these media publications in...

The Dynamics of Attitudes toward Immigrants: Cohort Analyses for Western EU Member States

Public opinion climates on immigrants are subject to certain dynamics. This study examines two mechanisms for such dynamics in Western EU member states for the 2002–2018 period. First, the impact of cohort replacement and, second, the impact of periodic threat perceptions, namely, changing macroeconomic conditions and shifts in immigration rates. To date, empirical research on anti-immigrant sentiments ...

People Underestimate the Errors Made by Algorithms for Credit Scoring and Recidivism Prediction but Accept Even Fewer Errors

This study provides the first representative analysis of error estimations and willingness to accept errors in a Western country (Germany) with regards to algorithmic decision-making systems (ADM). We examine people’s expectations about the accuracy of algorithms that predict credit default, recidivism of an offender, suitability of a job applicant, and health behavior. Also, we ask whether expectations ...

The Role of Personality for Gender Gaps in Political Interest and Activity

Women have been found to be, on average, less interested in politics and less politically active than men, which might reduce the representation of women’s interests in a democracy. In order to enhance the understanding of these gender gaps, this preregistered study analyzes the role of personality differences for gender gaps in political interest and activity.I use a large representative sample of ...

Need for Long-Term Care Depends on Social Standing

The poor have a significantly shorter life expectancy than the wealthy. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel, this Weekly Report shows that poorer people become in need of care earlier in life and more often. In addition, blue-collar workers have a higher risk of requiring care than civil servants, as do people with high job strain compared to those with low job strain. The risk of dependence on ...

The role of energy taxation and prices for the clean energy transition, Lot 2

This project analyses the energy-related impacts of a possible EU carbon border adjustment and aims to answer the question how the absence or presence influences the outlook of the energy system in Europe (both on the supply and demand side) against the global dynamics.

The role of energy taxation and prices for the clean energy transition, Lot 1

This project analyses different fiscal and non-fiscal charges on energy carriers and aims to provide better knowledge to the degree to which combined/final price signals (including taxes, levies, and subsidies) could impact levels of energy consumption and energy-related investments (and notably whether there is a risk of “path dependency” in the energy transition).

Risky Asset Holdings during Covid-19 and Their Distributional Impact: Evidence from Germany

We present evidence from a repeated survey on risky asset holdings carried out on a representative sample of the German population six times between April and June 2020. Given the size of the Covid-19 shock, we find little evidence of portfolio rebalancing in April 2020. In May, however, individual investors started buying heavily, parallel to market recovery. The cross-section shows large differences ...

The State-Dependent Trading Behavior of Banks in the Oil Futures Market

We study the state-dependent trading behavior of financial institutions in the oil futures market, using structural vector autoregressions with Markov switching in heteroskedasticity. We consider two states of the world: tranquil and turbulent. We decompose the observable time-varying price volatility during the period 2006M6–2016M5 into changes in the slopes of traders’ demand curves and into changes ...

The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States