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Boards of Major German Companies Are Gradually Changing: Editorial

Proportion of Women on Top-Decision Making Bodies of Large Companies Increasing, Except on Supervisory Boards in the Financial Sector

The share of women on executive boards of large companies in Germany has increased somewhat more strongly than in previous years. The top 200 companies reached the ten percent mark for the first time: women held 14 more board positions than in the previous year, 94 out of 907. Growth was also somewhat more dynamic on the executive boards of the largest listed companies and companies with government- ...

More Women on Supervisory Boards: Increasing Indications that the Effect of the Gender Quota Extends to Executive Boards

The statutory gender quota for supervisory boards is effective: the proportion of women on supervisory boards has increased over the past years, especially in the companies subject to the quota. But is the quota creating trickle-down effects for executive boards? As the second part of the DIW Berlin Women Executives Barometer, this report analyzes whether a relationship between the growth of the proportion ...

The Effects of Rent Control in Latin America: A Century of Regulations in Argentina

Following World War I, rent control became a standard policy response to the housing shortage and the resulting rent increases. Typically, economists blame it for creating inefficiencies in the housing market and beyond. We investigate whether rental market regulations (including rent control, protection of tenants from eviction, and housing rationing) had any effects in a middle-income Latin American ...

Legal History, Institutions and Banking System Development in Africa

This paper links banking systems development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Specifically, we investigate the impact of differing legal traditions on the development of existing investor and creditor protection, and on African banking systems. Based on a sample of 40 African countries from 2000 to 2016, our empirical findings show a significant dependence of current financial ...

Comparing Self-Reported and Partnership-Inferred Sexual Orientation in Household Surveys

Research comparing heterosexuals with bisexuals and homosexuals in economics and the social sciences typically relies on two strategies to identify sexual orientation in existing survey data of general populations. Probing respondents to self-report their sexual orientation is generally considered the preferred option. Since self-reports are unavailable in most large multidisciplinary surveys, often ...

Is Monetary Policy Gender Neutral? Evidence from the Stock Market

We use US household survey data from 2001-2017 to investigate whether monetary policy has heterogeneous effects on women's and men's financial portfolio decisions by analyzing their equity investment. On the one hand, monetary policy significantly affects the entry decisions of women, but not of men: after a contractionary shock, the probability of women entering the stock market decreases. On the ...

Merger Efficiency Gains: Evidence from a Large Transport Merger in France

Many industries are seeing an increase in concentration, leading to a discussion on the effectiveness of horizontal merger enforcement. The policy debate shows that one of the key arguments put forward when supporting potential mergers is the possibility of realization of merger efficiency gains, specifically in the transport industry. Yet, there exists little empirical evidence on the actual effects ...

Modeling the Low-Carbon Transition of the European Energy System - a Quantitative Assessment of the Stranded Assets Problem

In this paper, multiple pathways for the European energy system until 2050 are computed, focusing on one of the major challenges of the low-carbon transition: the issue of unused capacities and stranded assets. Three different scenarios are analyzed, utilizing the Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) for calculations. A major feature is the introduction of limited foresight and imperfect planning ...

Same, but Different? Testing Monetary Policy Shock Measures

In this study, we determine the reliability and exogeneity of four popular monetary policy shock measures, namely the narrative series of Romer and Romer (2004), the high-frequency series of Barakchian and Crowe (2013), the high-frequency series of Gertler and Karadi (2015), and the hybrid series of Miranda-Agrippino and Ricco (2018b). To this end, we employ the Proxy-SVAR model and different empirical ...