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Workshop on Development Economics: "Firms and Productivity"

This workshop brings together high profile junior researchers from leading universities in Europe and the US, who present recent work on the nexus of firms and productivity in developing economies. The workshop is jointly organized by researchers from the DIW and the University of Munich (LMU). Attendance by invitation!

DENeB - 6th PhD Workshop

Productivity: Urban-Rural Differences Affect Productivity More Than East-West Differences

Following reunification, productivity in eastern Germany grew rapidly. A strong industrial sector is key to a thriving German economy. However, the narrowing of the industrial productivity gap between eastern and western Germany has come to a standstill since the financial and economic crisis and the gap remains considerable today. Nevertheless, when comparing similar regions in eastern and western ...

Integrating Randomized Controlled Field Trials into (Existing) Panel Surveys: The "Mentoring of Refugees" Study

Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are the gold standard in research design for studying causal relationships. In migration studies, they can, for instance, help studying the effects of government and non-government programs on migrant integration. However, RCTs are challenging and cost-intensive to conduct. In this brief, we outline a research design that integrates RCTs into existing panel surveys ...

TBA

BAMS is a joint seminar by the DIW Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance, the HU Berlin and the WZB.

A question of gender: How promotions affect earnings

Occupational positions can explain an important part of the differences in pay between men and women. However, a considerable Gender Pay Gap exists even within the same occupational position. In this paper, we aim at understanding the reason for the gap within occupational positions and, therefore, investigate whether promotions lead to the same effect on earnings growth for men and women....

Proxy VAR Models in a Data-Rich Environment

Structural VAR models require two ingredients: (i) Informational sufficiency, and (ii) a valid identification strategy. These conditions are unlikely to be met by small-scale recursively identified VAR models. I propose a Bayesian Proxy Factor-Augmented VAR (BP-FAVAR) to combine a large information set with an identification scheme based on an external instrument. In an application to monetary policy ...

The Myth of Equal Opportunity in Germany?

Providing equal opportunities to all members of society independent of an individual’s socio-economic background is a major objective of German policy makers. However, evidence on the access to education suggests that opportunities of children with a non-academic family background are still unequally obstructed. When analysing the labour market implications of this social disadvantage in human capital, ...

What Makes an Employer?

As the policy debate on entrepreneurship increasingly centers on firm growth in terms of job creation, it is important to better understand which variables influence the first hiring decision and which ones influence the subsequent survival as an employer. Using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze what role individual characteristics of entrepreneurs play in sustainable job creation. ...

Rent Control, Market Segmentation, and Misallocation: Causal Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Intervention

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a large-scale policy intervention in the German housing market in 2015 to document this mechanism empirically. ...