Vorträge des DIW Berlin

Solarförderung kürzen, Atomlaufzeiten verlängern!? Wird die Energiewende ausgebremst?

Klimaschutz als Wirtschaftsmotor: Innovation statt Depression

A Methodology for the Calculation of the Global Economic Costs of Conflict

Challenges When Measuring Household Finance: Panel Discussion

Peace Dividends? Effect of Conflict Reduction on Activity Choice

Northern Uganda experienced a protracted conflict between the government and rebel groups between 1986 and 2006. Over 90% of the population in the Acholi (and later Lango) region was displaced, and insecurity constrained the number and types of activities that individuals could resort to in order to survive. In this paper, we study the effect of conflict reduction on household activity choices. We...

The Costs of the German Involvement in the War in Afghanistan

Strategien der Regionalentwicklung in Deutschland

Agreeable Housewives? Women's Noncognitive Skills and Transition to Employment after Childbirth

The findings of the previous economic literature on mothers' transition into employment after childbirth suggest that individuals' characteristics are much more important determinants than the institutional background. Another strand of recent literature found that noncognitive skills play an important role in economic and social success. Building on these two strands of literature, the present...

The Influence of Collusion on Price Changes: New Evidence from Major Cartel Cases

In this paper, we compare the distribution of price changes between collusive and non-collusive periods for ten major cartels. The first moments focus on previous research. We extend the discussion to the third (skewness) and fourth (kurtosis) moments. However, none of the above descriptive statistics can be considered as a robust test allowing a differentiation between competition and cartel....

Preferences for Childcare Policies: Theory and Evidence

We analyse preferences for public, private or mixed provision of childcare theoretically and empirically. We model childcare as a publicly provided private good. Richer households should prefer private provision to either pure public or mixed provision. If public provision redistributes from rich to poor, the rich should favour mixed over pure public provision, but if public provision...

Unemployment and Portfolio Choice: Does Persistence Matter?

We use a life cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice to study the effects of social security on the investment decisions of households for the European case. Our model is mainly based on the one developed by Cocco, Gomes, and Maenhout (2005). We extend it by unemployment risk using Markov chains to model the transition between different employment states. In contrast to most models in the...

Liquidity and Asset Prices: How Strong Are the Linkages?

The appropriate design of monetary policy in integrated financial markets is one of the most challenging areas for central banks. One hot topic is whether the rise in liquidity in recent years has contributed to the formation of price bubbles in asset markets. If strong linkages exist, the inclusion of asset prices in the monetary policy rule can eventually limit speculative runs and negative...

Testing for Convergence in Stock Markets: A Non-linear Factor Approach

This paper applies the Phillips and Sul (2007) method to test for convergence in stock returns to an extensive dataset including monthly stock price indices for five EU countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK) as well as the US over the period 1973-2008. We carry out the analysis on both sectors and individual industries within sectors. As a first step, we use the Stock and...

Precautionary and Entrepreneurial Saving: New Evidence from German Households

Various studies have interpreted a positive correlation between income risk and wealth as evidence for large precautionary savings. However, the high estimates emerged from pooling non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs without controlling for heterogeneity. This paper provides evidence for Germany based on representative panel data including private wealth balance sheets. Entrepreneurs, who face...

Public Pensions, Changing Employment Patterns, and the Impact of Pension Reforms across Birth Cohorts: A Microsimulation Analysis for Germany

We analyze the impact of changing employment patterns and pension reforms on the future level of public pensions across birth cohorts in Germany. The analysis is based on a microsimulation model which accounts for cohort effects in individual employment and unemployment and earnings over the lifecycle as well as the differential impact of recent pension reforms on birth cohorts. Cohort effects...

Knapsack Procurement

A budget-constrained buyer wants to purchase items from a shortlisted set. Items are differentiated by observable quality and sellers have private reserve prices for their items. Sellers quote prices strategically, inducing a knapsack game. The buyer's problem is to select a subset of maximal quality. We propose a procurement mechanism that can be viewed as a game-theoretic extension of the greedy...

Expected Future Earnings, Taxation, and University Enrollment: A Microeconometric Model with Uncertainty

Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to enter university studies if expected lifetime utility from this choice is greater than that anticipated from starting...

Zur Bedeutung des Alterssicherungsvermögens für eine erweiterte Vermögensverteilungsrechung

Anwartschaften an Alterssicherungssysteme - gesetzliche, tarifliche und private - stellen erhebliche Vermögensbestände dar. Analysen zur personellen Vermögensverteilung haben dies bislang aus Datengründen allerdings nicht vollständig berücksichtigt. Nach neuen Berechnungen auf Basis der 2007 erhobenen Vermögensdaten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) beliefen sich die gesamten Renten- und...

In Search of the Marginal Entrepreneur: Benchmarking Regulatory Frameworks in Their Effect on Entrepreneurship

This paper develops a benchmarking method in order to assess how legal and regulatory frameworks provide adequate incentives for entrepreneurship. The analysis is based on a dataset that combines individual data on entrepreneurship with indicators about the restrictiveness of regulations. The subjective aspect of entrepreneurial ventures is controlled for using a variable that captures the...

Global Oil Markets Revisited: Cartel or Stackelberg Market?

This paper investigates the existence of market power and the sequentiality of games in the crude oil market. In particular, we examine whether Saudi Arabia acts as a Stackelberg leader or in a simultaneous-move framework, in a number of market power scenarios ranging from perfect competition to cartel. We develop a numerical simulation model that is formulated as a complementarity problem,...