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Identifying Uncertainty Shocks Using the Price of Gold

We propose a new instrument to identify the impact of uncertainty shocks in a SVAR model with external instruments. We construct the instrument for uncertainty shocks by exploiting variations in the price of gold around selected events. The events capture periods of changes in uncertainty unrelated to other macroeconomic shocks. The variations in the price of gold around such events provide a measure ...

Fiscal Policy Rules, Budget Deficits, and Forecasting Biases

In this paper, we analyze the impact fiscal policy rules have on budget deficits and forecasting biases in official budget outlooks. Persistent budget deficits and over-optimistic budget forecasts have been observed in many countries in the past, especially in the euro area. To prevent such developments from happening in the future, fiscal rules have been revised or implemented with the aim to strengthen ...

Jumps and Stochastic Volatility in Crude Oil Futures Prices Using Conditional Moments of Integrated Volatility

We evaluate alternative models of the volatility of commodity futures prices based on high-frequency intraday data from the crude oil futures markets for the October 2001–December 2012 period. These models are implemented with a simple GMM estimator that matches sample moments of the realized volatility to the corresponding population moments of the integrated volatility. Models incorporating both ...

The Mayor's Advantage: Causal Evidence on Incumbency Effects in German Mayoral Elections

More and more schoolchildren are using paid tutoring – especially those from middle-income households

Proportion of tutored students nearly twice as high as 15 years ago – household income becoming a less influential factor – parental migration background no longer determines participation – nevertheless, educational inequalities persist More and more schoolchildren in Germany are using private tutoring: 47 percent of the 17-year-olds who were interviewed between 2009 and 2013 reported ...

More and More Students, Especially Those from Middle-Income Households, Are Using Private Tutoring

Private tutoring is playing an increasingly significant role in the education of many teenagers and children: In 2013, a total of 18 percent of students at the secondary level (approximately ages 10–17) worked with paid tutors; among students at the primary level (approximately ages 6–10), this figure stood at six percent. In the period between 2009 and 2013, an average of 47 percent of 17-year-old ...

Adolescents from Low-Income Households Use Private Tutoring the Least Frequently: Eight Questions to C. Katharina Spiess

"Adolescents from low-income households use private tutoring the least frequently": Eight Questions to C. Katharina Spieß

How much are German schoolchildren being tutored? The usage of tutoring in Germany is noteworthy. Among secondary school students, 18 percent reported having been tutored in the past 6 months. Among primary school students, it’s clearly much lower, at 6 percent. However, it’s remarkable that even first-graders report that they have received tutoring. [...] The full interview with C. ...

The DIW Graduate Center has new Student’s Representatives

We happily announce that the doctoral students across all cohorts have elected their new 2016 Student’s Representatives. It was a tight race, with Marie LeMouel and Marica Valente coming out on top! This is Marcia’s first term and Marie’s second – and we wish them all the best as they bring their keen sense of the issues important to the GC students, as well as continued good ...

Are We Architects of Our Own Happiness? The Importance of Family Background for Well-Being

This paper analyzes whether individuals have equal opportunity to achieve happiness (or well-being). We estimate sibling correlations and intergenerational correlations in self-reported life satisfaction, satisfaction with household income, job satisfaction, and satisfaction with health. We find high sibling correlations for all measures of well-being. The results suggest that family background explains, ...