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Refereed essays Web of Science
In Eastern Germany, wage differentiation between firms has clearly grown, parallel to individual wage differentials. Nevertheless, the wage spread between firms is still much less than in Western Germany. In this paper, a non-parametric decomposition is used to analyze the difference between the wages spread in the two parts of Germany. Only part of the difference can be explained by different economic ...
In:
Economics of Transition
16 (2008), 2, S. 273-292
| Bernd Görzig, Martin Gornig, Axel Werwatz
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Refereed essays Web of Science
Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper, we examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development in the EU: overall convergence, on the one hand, and persistent or even increasing spatial concentration (agglomeration), on the other. Kernel density estimation, Markov chain analysis and ...
In:
Papers in Regional Science
87 (2008), 2, S. 193-217
| Kurt Geppert, Andreas Stephan
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Refereed essays Web of Science
The local business tax as the main revenue source of local governments in Germany has been under extensive debate for decades. Proposals for reform range from a pure profit tax to an origin-based value-added tax. Local business taxation systems in OECD countries actually represent the whole spectrum between these two extremes. We use a newly developed microsimulation model for the business sector in ...
In:
Finanzarchiv
64 (2008), 2, S. 245-272
| Frank M. Fossen, Stefan Bach
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Refereed essays Web of Science
This paper discusses long-term contracts as a particular organizational form situated somewhere between full vertical integration and short-term, market-based trading in the natural gas industry. We focus on the determinants of the duration of contracts under changing technical, economic, and institutional conditions. Using 311 long-term contracts we find that duration decreases as international market ...
In:
Review of Industrial Organization
32 (2008), 2, S. 131-143
| Christian von Hirschhausen, Anne Neumann
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Refereed essays Web of Science
This paper provides a cross-country efficiency analysis of electricity distribution companies in the East European transition countries of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. We use common nonparametric efficiency measurement such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Free Disposal Hull (FDH) under different assumptions and apply recent developments of statistical inference in nonparametric ...
In:
Journal of Productivity Analysis
29 (2008), 2, S. 155-167
| Astrid Cullmann, Christian von Hirschhausen
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Refereed essays Web of Science
In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the economic transition toward a market economy increases the efficiency of firms. We study 32 Polish electricity distribution companies between 1997 and 2002, by applying common benchmarking methods to the panel: the non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA), the free disposal hull (FDH), and, as a parametric approach, the stochastic frontier analysis ...
In:
Economics of Transition
16 (2008), 2, S. 335-357
| Astrid Cullmann, Christian von Hirschhausen
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Refereed essays Web of Science
The purpose of the paper is to assess the theory that the downside risk insurance provided by more generous welfare states generates long run efficiency gains, which counterbalance the short run efficiency losses caused by work disincentives in these states (Feldstein 1974, 1976; Sinn 1995, 1996). Testing downside risk theory requires long term data, so the paper makes use of the three longest running ...
In:
Social Indicators Research
86 (2008), 2, S. 213-231
| Bruce Headey
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Refereed essays Web of Science
Though information about jobs passed through personal networks has been central to the labor market integration of immigrants in the United States, its role in the economic absorption of immigrants in Germany, where jobs are scarcer and employers more likely to demand formal qualifications, is less clear. Through analysis of German Socio-Economic Panel data, we discovered that nearly half of all immigrant-origin ...
In:
International Migration Review
42 (2008), 2, S. 425-448
| Anita I. Drever, Onno Hoffmeister
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Refereed essays Web of Science
The positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable. However, one persistent problem for the German economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past. Therefore, any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market. The paper describes ...
In:
Energy Policy
36 (2008), 1, S. 108-117
| Ulrike Lehr, Joachim Nitsch, Marlene Kratzat, Christian Lutz, Dietmar Edler
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Refereed essays Web of Science
Der Beitrag analysiert den Zielkonflikt zwischen Leistungs- und Bedarfsgerechtigkeit in modernen Wohlfahrtsstaaten und das fundamentale Problem, weshalb die Abgabenund Steuerlast von den Bürgern akzeptiert wird. Es wird die Frage beantwortet, inwieweit ein auf der Makroebene der Gesellschaft bestehendes Steuerungsproblem moderner Wohlfahrtsstaaten auch in der individuellen Wahrnehmung Gerechtigkeitsprobleme ...
In:
Soziale Welt
59 (2008), 1, S. 7-30
| Stefan Liebig, Jürgen Schupp