Search

Interactions between Bank Levies and Corporate Taxes: How Is Bank Leverage Affected?

Regulatory bank levies set incentives for banks to reduce leverage. At the same time, corporate income taxation makes funding through debt more attractive. In this paper, we explore how regulatory levies affect bank capital structure, depending on corporate income taxation. Based on bank balance sheet data from 2006 to 2014 for a panel of EU-banks, our analysis yields three main results: The introduction ...

Make Sure the Kids are OK: Indirect Effects of Ground-Level Ozone on Well-Being

This paper uses a panel of German individuals and highly granular pollution data to test if air pollution affects adults’ well-being indirectly through the health of their children. Results show that ozone decreases the well-being of individuals with children while not affecting persons without kids. We confirm the same effect for fine particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. Concerning the mechanism, ...

Heteroskedastic Proxy Vector Autoregressions

In proxy vector autoregressive models, the structural shocks of interest are identified by an instrument. Although heteroskedasticity is occasionally allowed for, it is typically taken for granted that the impact effects of the structural shocks are time-invariant despite the change in their variances. We develop a test for this implicit assumption and present evidence that the assumption of time-invariant ...

Effects of flexible digitized working opportunities on informal care and housework

Working from home can benefit work–family balance, but, due to the gendered meaning of flexibility, risks increasing the unequal allocation of unpaid care work in couples. Does working from home increase the within-couple gender care gap? To address this question, we use linear panel data models based on German Socio-Economic Panel data from 1997 to 2014. The results indicate that working...

Make the European Green Deal Real – Combining Climate Neutrality and Economic Recovery

Germany Hit Hard by the Global Recession as Uncertainty Weighs Heavy: Editorial

Coronavirus Pandemic Plunging Global Economy into a Serious Recession: DIW Economic Outlook

The consequences of the ongoing 2020 coronavirus pandemic are leaving deep marks on the global economy. In the first quarter of 2020, global production sank by 15.5 percent over the course of the worldwide lockdown. Since containment measures in many countries were mainly implemented during the second quarter of 2020, the slump in the first half of 2020 is likely to be even more severe overall. Due ...

The Role of Labor Market Frictions in Structural Transformation

Against what theory predicts, large productivity gaps across sectors persist and the process of structural transformation is stagnant in many developing economies. This wedge between observed and optimal labor allocations suggests the presence of institutional and market frictions, which impose costs on the reallocation of labor from low to high productivity sectors, thus leading to sub-optimal allocations ...

An empirical analysis of non-take up of social assistance for the elderly

The aim of the research project was to non-take-up of social assistance for the elderly. The analysis is based on the Socio-economic Panel (SOEP). Using a microsimulation model (STSM) developed at DIW Berlin, it was determined on the basis of survey data from the previous year (including income and property information, household context, living situation, health situation, household equipment)...

In a Lonely Place: Investigating Regional Differences in Loneliness

Loneliness has traditionally been studied on the individual level. This study is one of the first to systematically describe and explaindifferences in loneliness on a fine-grained regional level. Using data from the nationally representative German Socio-EconomicPanel Study (N ¼17,602), we mapped the regional distribution of loneliness across Germany and examined whether regionaldifferences in loneliness ...