Topic Research and Development

Crowding of International Mutual Funds

We study the relationship between crowding and performance in the active mutual fund industry. We construct a fund-specific measure of crowding using the equity holdings overlap of 17,364 global funds. Funds in the top decile of crowding underperform passive benchmark funds by 1.4% per year. The impact of crowding on performance cannot be attributed to diseconomies of scale. We explore several mechanisms: ...

Two Dimensions of Political Trust in Russia

This paper analyzes two dimensions of factors of political trust in Russia. The first dimension is the target dimension (sociotropic vs. egocentric), the second dimension is the time dimension (retrospective vs. perspective). The study is based on the microdata of 2016 Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. We find a robust evidence in favor of the ...

The Hidden Homeownership Welfare State: An International Long-Term Perspective on the Tax Treatment of Homeowners

Welfare is traditionally understood through social security decommodifying labor markets or social investment policies. In the domain of housing, however, welfare for homeowners is largely hidden in the tax codes’ fiscal exemptions. Based on a content analysis of legislation, this paper introduces a novel yearly database of 37 countries between 1910 and 2020 to uncover the “hidden welfare state” of ...

Knowledge sharing within firms across space

Determinants and effects of mergers and acquisitions: Evidence from drug projects in the diabetes market

This is an online seminar using Webex. You will receive the login data with the invitation to the talk. Abstract:   There is an ongoing debate both in academia and in policy circles about the effects of takeovers of small, young firms by large incumbents in innovative industries. Many argue that such takeovers are anticompetitive and harm innovation by killing off nascent competition....

DG Competition of the European Commission publishes several studies evaluating State aid rules provided by a consortium with the participation of the DIW Berlin

On 2 June 2020 DG Competition of the European Commission published several support studies on the retrospective evaluation of State aid rules. This “Fitness check” will serve as a basis for future Commission’s decisions about whether to further prolong or update the rules expiring in 2020. The consortium of DIW Berlin, Lear, Sheppard Mullin and UEA Consulting under the leadership ...

Barriers to humanitarian migration, traumatic events and integration outcomes: Evidence from Germany

In this study we estimate the hidden cost of restrictive migration policies and highlight the need for health-related support among refugees. The traumatic events asylum seekers experience at origin due to exposure to violent conflict and during the journey to the EU may have lasting negative effects on their economic and social integration in the destination country. We hypothesize that...

What do we want? And when do we want it? Alternative objectives and their implications for experimental design.

Summary:  This talk will provide a survey of several papers on the theory and practice of experimental design. I will compare different objectives (estimator precision, outcomes of participants, informing policy choice to maximize average outcomes, and informing policy choice to maximize utilitarian welfare), and their implications for experimental design. I will consider heuristic...

Wrangling and working with 3D-Building Models

The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) provides 3D-Building models for Germany. The data come in a City-GML (geographical markup language) format, locating every building throughout Germany and providing information such as its ground plan, height, and the building’s purpose. I will provide an overview on the data, its coverage and limitations, as they are available for...

Welche Fakten braucht die Gesellschaft eigentlich?

Sind Daten das neue Gold? Man hat den Eindruck, dass wir alle technischen Finessen ausloten, um an das wertvolle Gut heranzukommen. Was auch immer mit dem Begriff „Daten“ assoziiert wird, scheint diesem Vorhaben Glanz zu verleihen. Entscheidungen, Politik, Management und vieles mehr sollten jetzt „datengesteuert“ sein. Big Data, Machine Learning, Algorithmen und kü...