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Flipping Journals to Open: Rethinking Publishing Infrastructure

The resignation of the editorial board of an Elsevier-owned linguistics journal and its open access reorganization could get the ball rolling for other journals to follow suit. This case is a reminder that open access means more than just providing access to an article; it means rethinking the whole process of publishing. Open access also raises important questions about who owns the critical information ...

Factors Influencing Female Labor Force Participation in Egypt and Germany: A Comparative Study

This paper aims to identify the major factors influencing female labor force participation (FLFP) in Egypt and Germany. On a narrow scope and given the unclear relationship between educational attainment and Egyptian FLFP, this paper seeksto examine the effect of educational attainment on the Egyptian FLFP while considering other personal and household factors. On a broader scope, the literature on ...

How Does Maternal Pension Wealth Affect Family Old-Age Savings in Germany?

This paper examines how families adjust their private old-age savings in response to a change in individual pension wealth. The regression discontinuity approach exploits two expansions of the child care pension benefit, in 1992 and in 1999, as natural experiments. The empirical analysis is based on three waves of the Survey of Income and Expenditure (EVS): 1998, 2003 and 2008. All results indicate ...

German Economy Back on Track, Despite Weak Global Economy

The global economy is stalling. Global production increased by only 3.3 percent last year—the lowest growth rate since the financial crisis—and is expected to rise by only 3.3 percent in 2016 as well, which is lower than originally predicted. The reason for the sluggish growth lies primarily in the changes taking place in the emerging countries: the Chinese economy continues to lose momentum, and low ...

Private Consumption Will Remain a Powerful Growth Driver: Eight Questions to Simon Junker

Monetary Policy and Defaults in the US

This paper uses a structural VAR model to study the effect of monetary policy on the delinquency rate of business loans and consumer credit. The VAR is identified using at the same time several external instruments, which cover different approaches from the literature. Delinquency rates, defined as the rate of loans whose repayment is overdue for more than a month relative to total loans, are found ...

German economy back on track, despite some rough waters

DIW Berlin’s forecast: GDP to rise by 1.6 percent in 2016 – robust labor market, wage increases, and refugee expenditure fueling consumption – investment and global economy inhibiting growth According to the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), the German economy is expected to grow by 1.6 percent this year, despite a gloomy global economy. This prognosis is similar ...

"Private consumption will remain a powerful growth driver": Eight Questions to Simon Junker

Mr. Junker, what kind of growth should we expect for the German economy?  The German economy is expected to grow by 1.6 percent this year, which is a bit weaker than we had forecasted this past winter. This slight downward revision is primarily due to the fact that industry experienced a weak phase over the past six months, especially in the final quarter of 2015. The major reason for this was ...

Signals Sell: Designing a Product Line when Consumers Have Social Image Concerns

One important function of consumption is for consumers to show off their taste, virtue or wealth. While empirical observations suggest that producers take this into account, existing research has concentrated on analyzing the demand side. This paper investigates how a monopolist optimally designs its product line when consumers differ both in their taste for quality and their desire for a positive ...

Rules versus Human Beings, and the Mandate of the ECB

The actions by the European Central Bank (ECB) during the global and European crises have triggered a highly controversial debate, in particular in Germany, about the costs and benefits of the chosen policy path. The article reviews, compares, and evaluates the different arguments made in favor and against ECB policies around three key dimensions—the link of the policy path to price stability, financial ...