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DIW Discussion Papers 1241 / 2012
We assess the relevance of formal education for the productivity of the self-employed and distinguish between opportunity entrepreneurs, who voluntarily pursue a business opportunity, and necessity entrepreneurs, who lack alternative employment options. We expect differences in the returns to education between these groups because of different levels of control. We use the German Socio-economic Panel ...
2012| Frank M. Fossen, Tobias J. M. Büttner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1240 / 2012
Applying a financial assets approach, we analyze the returns and earnings risk of investments into different types of human capital. Even though the returns from investing in human capital are extensively studied, little is known about the properties of the returns to different types of human capital within a given educational path. Using information from the German Micro Census, we estimate the ...
2012| Daniela Glocker, Johanna Storck
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DIW Discussion Papers 1239 / 2012
The number of parties in government is usually considered to increase spending. We show that this is not necessarily the case. Using a new method to detect close election outcomes in multi-party systems, we isolate truly exogenous variation in the type of government. With data from municipalities in the German state of Bavaria, we show in regression discontinuity-type estimations that absolute majorities ...
2012| Ronny Freier, Christian Odendahl
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DIW Discussion Papers 1234 / 2012
Microsimulation methods and models of labor market decisions have attracted a lot of attention as an approach to the assessment of consequences of family related policies in the area of labor market and fertility. We set these models in the context of relevant demographic theories and present them from the point of view of their potential as tool to guide effective policy making with the aim to reconcile ...
2012| Anna Kurowska, Michal Myck, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 1231 / 2012
This paper empirically investigates the relevance of liquidity constraints and excess sensitivity in intertemporal household consumption. Using a pseudo panel that has been constructed on rich German consumption survey data, we estimate the consumption responses to permanent and transitory income shocks, as well as the presence of excess sensitivity to anticipated income changes. A switching regression ...
2012| Martin Beznoska, Richard Ochmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1227 / 2012
We calculate the expected incidence of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) using industry and household-level data. By combining data on direct CO2 emissions by production sector from the German Environmental Account with the German Input-Output Accounts, we calculate the CO2 intensity of each sector covered by the EU-ETS. We focus on the impact of price increases in the electricity ...
2012| Martin Beznoska, Johanna Cludius, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1220 / 2012
The life-cycle hypothesis implies that consumption would not decline at retirement. However, several studies found relevant declines in food consumption after retirement for the United States. Others concluded that this contradiction of the life-cycle hypothesis is solved by allowing for broader measures of consumption than food. Using repeated cross-section data for Germany, this paper analyzes the ...
2012| Martin Beznoska, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1215 / 2012
In this study we investigate the impact of the thin capitalization rule (TCR), introduced in Germany in 2008, on firms' capital structure, investment and profitability. The identification of the causal effects is based on the escape clauses in the regulation using a difference-in-difference approach. Our results present evidence that firms strongly react in order to avoid the limited deductibility ...
2012| Hermann Buslei, Martin Simmler
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DIW Discussion Papers 1211 / 2012
This paper investigates the relationship between wealth, ageing and saving behaviour of private households by using pooled cross sections of German consumption survey data. Different components of wealth are distinguished, as their impact on the savings rate is not homogeneous. On average, the effect attributed to real estate dominates the other components of wealth. In addition, the savings rate strongly ...
2012| Ansgar Belke, Christian Dreger, Richard Ochmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1210 / 2012
Dynamic discrete choice models usually require a general specification of unobserved heterogeneity. In this paper, we apply Bayesian procedures as a numerical tool for the estimation of a female labor supply model based on a sample size which is typical for common household panels. We provide two important results for the practitioner: First, for a specification with a multivariate normal distribution ...
2012| Peter Haan, Daniel Kemptner, Arne Uhlendorff