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DIW Economic Outlook

The German economy is on track, and will likely grow by 1.8 percent this year; in the coming year, with a slight increase in dynamics, it will grow by 1.9 percent. With these figures DIW Berlin confirms its forecast from this summer. Employment growth continues; the unemployment rate will decrease this year to 6.4 percent, where it will remain in 2016. Due to the sharp drop in oil prices this year, ...

The Situation in the Euro Area Continues to Present Risks: Eight Questions to Ferdinand Fichtner

Unfair Wage Perceptions and Sleep: Evidence from German Survey Data

The author uses large-scale German survey data for the years 2009, 2011 and 2013 in order to analyze the nexus between the individual perception of being unfairly paid and measures for quantity and quality of sleep, namely, hours of sleep during workweek and during weekend, happiness with sleep, and sleep disorders diagnosed by a doctor. Main findings of the regression analysis are that workers, who ...

Non-economic Damages in Medical Malpractice Appeals: Does the Jurisdiction Make a Difference?

This article assesses predictors of payouts and non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases decided by the Spanish Supreme Court from 2006 until 2010. Medical malpractice cases can be judged in administrative or civil courts, and this distinction heavily relies on the type of hospital where the medical accident took place (in general terms, administrative courts judge cases involving public hospitals ...

(Mis-)Predicted Subjective Well-Being Following Life Events

The correct prediction of how alternative states of the world affect our lives is a cornerstone of economics. We study how accurate people are in predicting their future well-being when facing major life events. Based on individual panel data, we compare people's forecast of their life satisfaction in five years' time to their actual realisations later on. This is done after the individuals experience ...

Financing Patterns of R&D in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and the Perception of Innovation Barriers in Germany

We analyze the role public support plays in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) R&D financing as well as these firms’ assessments of financing conditions in the context of other framework conditions for innovation. Using the sample of 2,708 German SMEs that participated in public R&D promotion programs during 2005–10, we identify four unique types of R&D financing. Firms are generally positive ...

International Knowledge Spillovers through High-Tech Imports and R&D of Foreign-Owned Firms

The international transmission of knowledge through import spillovers, as a source of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth, has received much attention in the literature. We investigate two additional direct channels through which R&D disseminates: the import of high-technology goods and the internationalization of business R&D. Building on an extensive data-set, covering both developing and industrial ...

Small Might Be Beautiful, but Bigger Performs Better: Scale Economies in "Green" Refurbishments of Apartment Housing

The energy efficiency of the residential housing stock plays a key role in strategies to mitigate climate change and global warming. In this context, it is frequently argued that private investment and the quality of thermal upgrades are too low in the light of the challenges faced and the potential energy cost savings. While many authors address the potential barriers for investors to increase energy ...

Childhood Roots of Financial Literacy

Financial literacy predicts informed financial decisions, but what explains financial literacy? We use the concept of financial socialization and aim to represent three major agents of financial socialization: family, school and work. Thus we compile twelve relevant childhood characteristics in a new survey study and examine their relation to financial literacy, while controlling for established socio-demographic ...

Confidence Bands for Impulse Responses: Bonferroni vs. Wald

In impulse response analysis estimation uncertainty is typically displayed by constructing bands around estimated impulse response functions. If they are based on the joint asymptotic distribution possibly constructed with bootstrap methods in a frequentist framework, often individual confidence intervals are simply connected to obtain the bands. Such bands are known to be too narrow and have a joint ...