Vorträge des DIW Berlin

Personal Bankruptcy Law, Wealth and Entrepreneurship: Theory and Evidence from the Introduction of a "Fresh Start"

A personal bankruptcy law that allows for a "fresh start" after bankruptcy reduces the individual risk involved in entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, as risk shifts to creditors who recover less of their credit after a debtor's bankruptcy, lenders may charge higher interest rates or ration credit supply, which can hamper entrepreneurship. Both aspects of a more forgiving personal...

Extending the Empirical Basis for Wealth Inequality Research Using Statistical Matching of Administrative and Survey Data

Social security entitlements are a substantial source of wealth that grows in importance over the individual's lifecycle. Despite its quantitative relevance, social security wealth has been thus far omitted from wealth inequality analyses. In Germany, it is the lack of adequate micro data that accounts for this shortcoming. The two main contributions of this paper are: First, to elaborate a...

Gov-arrrgh-nance: Even Criminals Need Law and Order

Looking for Jobs with Good Pay and Good Working Conditions

Efficiency wage models argue that by increasing workers' utility, firms can enhance their productivity. Providing better working conditions instead of higher wages may be an alternative. In a world of perfect competition for every good, there is a market for non-material job amenities in which workers "willingness to pay" for these goods implies workers accept certain wage differentials. As a...

Remittances and Gender: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence

In this paper, we focus on network- and gender-specific determinants of remittances, which are often explained theoretically by way of intra-family contracts. We develop a basic formal concept that includes aspects of the transnational network and derive hypotheses from it. For our empirical investigation, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2006. Our...

Trade Liberalization and Poverty: A Macro-Micro Analysis in Ethiopia

Spillover Effects of Maternal Education on Child's Health and Schooling

This is the first study investigating the causal effect of maternal education on child¿s health and schooling outcomes in Germany. We apply an instrumental variables approach that has not yet been used in the intergenerational context. For that purpose, we draw on a rich German panel data set (SOEP) containing information about three generations. This allows instrumenting maternal education by the...

Distributional and Welfare Effects of Germany's Year 2000 Tax Reform

This paper empirically investigates distributional and welfare effects of Germany's year 2000 income tax reform. The reform is simulated in an ex-ante behavioral microsimulation approach. Dead weight loss of changes in capital income taxation is estimated in a structural model for household savings and asset demand applied to German survey data. Significant reductions in tax rates result in income...

Does Gender Affect Funding Success at the Peer-to-Peer Credit Markets?: Evidence from the Largest German Lending Platform

Studies of peer-to-peer lending in the USA find that female borrowers have better chances of getting funds than males. Is differential treatment of borrowers of different sexes a common feature of peer-to-peer lendingmarkets or is it subject to specific businessmodels, ways of fixing loan contracts and even national financial systems? We aim at answering this question by providing evidence on loan...

The Effects of Conflict on Fertility in Ruanda

Interconnections of Cognitive and Affective Development during the Preschool Years

Marktmacht in Energiemärkten: Modellierungsergebnisse für den Rohölmarkt

Einführung in grundlegende Kategorien und Erhebungsmethoden in der Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung und erste Ergebnisse

Gender-Specific Occupational Segregation, Glass-Ceiling Effects, and Earnings in Managerial Positions: Results of a Fixed-Effects Model

The study analyses the gender pay gap in private-sector management positions in Germany based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2008. It focuses in particular on gender segregation in the labor market, that is, on the unequal distribution of women and men across different occupations and on the effects of this inequality on earnings levels and gender wage...

Occupational Gender Composition and Workplace Integration: What Role Do Gendered Work Contents Play?

Immigrant Occupational Composition and the Earnings of Immigrants and Natives in Germany

Eurorettung, Staatsverschuldung und Ratingagenturen

Spite and Cognitive Skills in Preschoolers

Although spiteful preferences play a crucial role in the development of human large-scale cooperation, there is little evidence on spiteful behavior and its determinants in children. We investigate the relationship between children¿s cognitive skills and spiteful behavior in a sample of 214 preschoolers aged 5-6 and their mothers. Other-regarding behavior of both mothers and children is elicited...

Beliefs and Actions in the Trust Game: Creating Instrumental Variables to Estimate the Causal Effect

Erfahrungen der Wiedervereinigung in Deutschland: Vortrag und Diskussion