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Education Is the Driving Force for Labor Market Integration: Seven Questions for Stefan Bach

Bremen Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development (BRISE)

The Bremen Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development (BRISE) is a longitudinal study that systematically investigates the effects of early childhood intervention. BRISE follows socio-economically challenged families in Bremen during early childhood. The support chain links selected support programs beginning at a prenatal stage and continuing until the first year of primary school. The...

No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self

We report on two experiments investigating whether there is a gender difference in thewillingness to compete against oneself (self-competition), similar to what is found whencompeting against others (other-competition). In one laboratory and one online marketexperiment, involving a total of 1,200 participants, we replicate the gender-gap inwillingness to other-compete but find no evidence of a gender ...

Florian Mölders wins the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development Best Paper Prize 2016

Florian Mölders, a DIW Graduate Center alumnus, has received the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development Best Paper Prize 2016 for your article ‘International knowledge spillovers through high-tech imports and R&D of foreign-owned firms’, published in volume 25, issue 4. together with Heike Belitz.

Upstream Monopoly and Downstream Information Sharing

We analyze a vertical structure with an upstream monopoly and two downstream retailers. Demand is uncertain but each retailer receives an informative private signal about the state of the demand. We construct an incentive compatible and ex ante balanced mechanism which induces the retailers to share their information truthfully. Information sharing can be profitable for the retailers but is likely ...

Bank-Specific Shocks and House Price Growth in the U.S.

This paper investigates the link between mortgage supply shocks at the banklevel and regional house price growth in the U.S. using micro-level data on mortgage markets from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for the 1990-2014 period. Our results suggest that bank-specific mortgage supply shocks indeed affect house price growth at the regional level. The larger the idiosyncratic shocks to newly issued ...

The Natural Rate of Interest II: Empirical Overview

The concept of the natural rate of interest (NRI) dates back to Wicksell (1898) and has since then been highly debated in the economic literature. In practice, estimates of the NRI can be employed as a versatile tool for macroeconomic analysis and are a core element within the popular neo-Wicksellian (or New-Keynesian) framework. The real rate gap, i.e. the difference between the actual interest rate ...

The Natural Rate of Interest and Secular Stagnation

In many advanced economies, there has been a declining trend in interest rates over the past thirty years. Since the financial crisis, interest rates have remained particularly low. Though a decrease in inflation explains part of the fall in nominal interest rates, there is also a clear downtrend in real interest rates. Against this backdrop, a debate has emerged over the factors that might have contributed ...

Paid parental leave and child development: Evidence from the 2007 German parental benefit reform and administrative data

This paper examines the effects of a substantial change in publicly funded paid parental leave in Germany on child development and socio-economic development gaps at age 6. For children born before January 1, 2007, parental leave benefits were means-tested and paid for up to 24 months after childbirth.  Thereafter, parental leave benefits were earnings-related and only paid for up to 14...

The Natural Rate of Interest I: Theory

The term natural (or neutral) real interest rate refers to the equilibrium value of the real interest rate. As this equilibrium is usually conceived as a situation where inflationary or deflationary pressures have abated, the natural real interest rate is a key concept for central banks seeking to stabilize the general price level or targeting the rate of inflation. The present roundup provides a brief ...