Vorträge des DIW Berlin

Asymmetric Information and Rollover Risk

How do banks choose their debt maturity structure when credit markets are subject to information frictions? This paper proposes a model of equilibrium maturity choice with asymmetric information and endogenous roll-over risk. We show that in the presence of public signals about firms' creditworthiness (credit ratings), firms choose to expose themselves to positive roll-over risk in order to...

Do Entrepreneurs Really Earn Less?

Rates of Return and Early Retirement Disincentives: Evidence from a German Pension

To counteract the financial pressure emerging in aging societies, statutory pay-as-you-go pension schemes are undergoing fundamental reforms in many Western countries. Starting with cohort 1937, Germany introduced permanent pension deductions for early retirement. This paper examines the evolution of the profitability of pension contributions against the background of this reform for cohorts 1935-...

Analyzing Economic Policies that Affect Supply and Demand: A Structural Model of Productivity, Labor Supply and Rationing

Is the Equal Sharing of Market Work and Family Duties Hampered by Financial Means or Constraints?: Evidence from a Structural Labor Supply Model with Involuntary Unemployment and Hours Constraints

Two Steps Forward - One Step Back? Evaluating Recent Child Care Policies in Germany

Monetary Policy, Bank Bailouts and the Sovereign-Bank Risk Nexus in the Euro Area

The Impact of Extreme Weather Events on Child Health: Evidence from Mongolia

Social Norms or Income Taxation - What Drives Couple's Labor Supply? Experimental Evidence

Door Opener or Waste of Time? The Effects of Internships on Labor Market Outcomes

Personality Traits and Preferences for College Education

Estimating the Impact of Alternative Multiple Imputation Methods on Longitudinal Wealth Data

Statistical Analysis in surveys is often facing missing data. As case-wise deletion and single imputation prove to have undesired properties, multiple imputation remains as a measure to handle this problem. In a longitudinal study, where for some missing values past or future data points might be available, the question arises how to successfully transform this advantage into better imputation...

Network Expansion to Mitigate Market Power: How Increased Integration Fosters Welfare

Lack of transmission capacity hampers the integration of the European electricity market, and thereby precludes reaping the full benefits of competition. We investigate the extent to which transmission grid expansion promotes competition, efficiency and welfare. This work proposes a three-stage model for grid investment: a benevolent planner decides on network upgrades, considering welfare...

Deterrence in EU Merger Policy

We estimate the deterrence effects of EU merger policy instruments over the 1990-2009 period. Our results suggest that phase-1 remedies uniquely involve robust deterrence in the European context, as they lead to fewer merger notifications in subsequent years. Furthermore, merger-policy actions as a whole – as well as preventions, phase-2 remedies, and phase-1 withdrawals – do not appear to yield...

Automatic Coding of Occupations: Using Machine Learning Algorithms for Occupation Coding in Several German Panel Surveys

In recent years several German large-scale panel studies demonstrated the demand for the coding of open-ended survey questions on respondents’ occupations (e. g. the National Education Panel Study (NEPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and the Panel Study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS)). So far occupational coding in Germany is mostly done semi-automatically, employing...

How Does Day-Care Availability Affect Parental Well-Being? Disentangling Different Mechanisms

Understanding the Effect of Retirement on Health Using Regression Discontinuity Design

Natural Disaster, Policy Action, and Mental Well-Being: The Case of Fukushima

Challenges for Future Family Policy

Lessons from German Reunification