Minimum wages may be an important instrument to reduce income inequality in a society and to promote socially inclusive economic growth. While higher minimum wages can support the Chinese transformation towards consumption driven growth, they can worsen the price competitiveness in export markets. As they differ throughout the country, this paper investigates their determinants at the regional level. ...
The GAMS codes and all data for the binary-equilibrium model presented in Chapter 4 and the Appendix of DIW Discussion Paper 1475 are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and are available for download at github. The repository also includes an application of this method to a natural gas market investment and production game to illustrate how the binary equilibrium ...
In 2016 the negotiations on the legislative instruments for the EU’s 2030 climate and energy targets will take off for good. Following the proposal for a revised ETS Directive in mid-2015, the next milestone for the implementing legislation will be a new Effort Sharing Decision - and the Commission is expected to publish a proposal before the summer. The event will feature insights and...
We analyze the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity in MSMEs with a special focus on micro firms with fewer than 10 employees; usually constituting the majority of firms in industrialized economies. Using the German KfW SME panel, we examine to what extent micro firms are different from other firms in terms of innovativeness. We find that while firms engage in innovative activities with smaller ...
The share of the older workers in the labor force has increased due to population aging and pension reforms in many countries. However, rules of the public and private pension schemes and restrictions from the employers still require large populations of older workers with possibly heterogeneous work preferences to retire fully at a given age. We study the preferences of older people for a rich...
BAMS is a joint seminar by the DIW Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance, the HU Berlin and the WZB.
This paper examines the effects of newspaper headlines on the exchange rates vis-à-vis both the US dollar and the euro for the currencies of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The data are daily and cover the period 03/1/2000- 12/5/2013. The estimated VAR-GARCH(1,1) model allows for both mean and volatility spillovers and for the possible impact of the recent financial crisis ...
Can risk-taking propensity be thought of as a trait that captures individual differences across domains, measures, and time? Studying stability in risk-taking propensities across the life span can help to answer such questions by uncovering parallel, or divergent, trajectories across domains and measures. We contribute to this effort by using data from respondents aged 18 to 85 in the German Socio-Economic ...
