External refereed essays

Local and Spatial Cointegration in the Wage Curve – a Spatial Panel Analysis for German Regions

The wage curve introduced by Blanchflower and Oswald (1990, 1994b) postulates a negative correlation between wages and unemployment. Empirical studies use different channels for a theoretical underpinning the relationship. Panel data models mostly draw on bargaining power or the efficiency wage hypothesis. Spatial econometric approaches can be rationalized by monopsonistic competition. However, the ...

Finding the Right Yardstick: Regulation of Electricity Networks under Heterogeneous Environments

Revenue cap regulation is often combined with systematic benchmarking to reveal the managerial inefficiencies when regulating natural monopolies. One example is the European energy sector, where benchmarking is based on actual cost data, which are influenced by managerial inefficiency as well as operational heterogeneity. This paper demonstrates how a conditional nonparametric method, which allows ...

Validation of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire Short Scale (NARQ-S) in Convenience and Representative Samples

Due to increased empirical interest in narcissism across the social sciences, there is a need for inventories that can be administered quickly while also reliably measuring both the agentic and antagonistic aspects of grandiose narcissism. In this study, we sought to validate the factor structure, provide representative descriptive data and reliability estimates, assess the reliability across the trait ...

The Effect of Increasing Education Efficiency on University Enrollment: Evidence from Administrative Data and an Unusual Schooling Reform in Germany

We examine the consequences of compressing secondary schooling on university enrollment. An unusual education reform in Germany reduced the length of academic high school while simultaneously increasing the instruction hours in the remaining years. Accordingly, students receive the same amount of schooling but over a shorter period of time. Based on a difference-in-differences approach and using administrative ...

Simulating Climate and Energy Policy with Agent-Based Modelling: the Energy Modelling Laboratory (Emlab)

We present an approach to simulate climate and energy policy for the EU, using a flexible and modular agent-based modelling approach and a toolbox, called the Energy Modelling Laboratory (EMLab). The paper shortly reviews core challenges and approaches for modelling climate and energy policy in light of the energy transition. Afterwards, we present an agent-based model of investment in power generation ...

R&D Investments and Corporate Cash Holdings

This paper presents evidence about how research and development (R&D) expenditures affect corporate cash holdings in European country groups that differ in their innovation capacity. In theory, one can expect intangible investments such as R&D to result in higher cash stocks than fixed investments, particularly because intangible capital is less suitable as collateral for obtaining external funds. ...

Capital Taxation and Government Debt Policy with Public Discounting

This paper characterizes capital taxation and public debt policy in a quantitative macroeconomic model with an impatient government and uncertainty. The government has access to linear taxes on capital and labor, and to non-state-contingent bonds. Government impatience generates positive and empirically realistic long-run levels of both capital taxes and public debt. Prior predictive analysis shows ...

Environmental Factors in Frontier Estimation – a Monte Carlo Analysis

We compare three recently developed frontier estimators, namely the conditional DEA (Daraio and Simar, 2005; 2007b), the latent class SFA (Greene, 2005; Orea and Kumbhakar, 2004), and the StoNEZD approach (Johnson and Kuosmanen, 2011) by means of Monte Carlo simulation. We focus on their ability to identify production frontiers and efficiency rankings in the presence of environmental factors. Our simulations ...

Comparing Observed and Unobserved Components of Childhood: Evidence From Finnish Register Data on Midlife Mortality From Siblings and Their Parents

In this study, we argue that the long arm of childhood that determines adult mortality should be thought of as comprising an observed part and its unobserved counterpart, reflecting the observed socioeconomic position of individuals and their parents and unobserved factors shared within a family. Our estimates of the observed and unobserved parts of the long arm of childhood are based on family-level ...

How to Measure and Proxy Permanent Income: Evidence from Germany and the U.S.

Permanent income (PI) is an enduring concept in the social sciences and is highly relevant to the study of inequality. Nevertheless, there has been insufficient progress in measuring PI. We calculate a novel measure of PI with the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Advancing beyond prior approaches, we define PI as the logged average of 20+ years of post-tax ...

Grenzen der Technologieneutralität: Infrastrukturförderung als notwendiger Pull für den Übergang zur Elektromobilität

Effectiveness of Early Retirement Disincentives: Individual Welfare, Distributional and Fiscal Implications

In aging societies, information on how to reform pension systems is essential to policy makers. This study scrutinizes effects of early retirement disincentives on retirement behavior, individual welfare, pensions and public budget. We employ administrative pension data and a detailed model of the German tax and social security system to estimate a structural dynamic retirement model. We find that ...

An Analysis of a Forward Capacity Market with Long-Term Contracts

We analyze the effectiveness of a forward capacity market (FCM) with long-term contracts in an electricity market in the presence of a growing share of renewable energy. An agent-based model is used for this analysis. Capacity markets can compensate for the deteriorating incentive to invest in controllable power plants when the share of variable renewable energy sources grows, but may create volatile ...

Third Country Effects of Fiscal Devaluations

We analyze fiscal devaluation in a three-country model. The introduction of the third country, outside a monetary union, increases the expansionary effect of fiscal devaluation and the second country of the monetary union experiences a boom instead of a recession.

Marginal Employment for Welfare Recipients: Stepping Stone or Obstacle?

Marginal employment (ME) is one of the largest forms of atypical employment in Germany. We analyse whether ME has a ‘stepping stone’ function for unemployed individuals, i.e., whether ME increases the subsequent probability of regular employment. We find differing treatment effects by unemployment duration. According to our results, ME increases the likelihood of regular employment within a 3-year ...

Will You Still Trust Me Tomorrow? The Causal Effect of Terrorism on Social Trust

How do people respond to terrorist events? Exploiting the timing of the 2010 wave of the annual ‘Society Opinion Media’ survey in Sweden, we study the causal effect of the Stockholm bombings of 11 December 2010 on Swedish public opinion. Our main contribution is that we draw explicit attention to the link between terrorist events and individuals’ social trust. While we identify a strong effect on individuals’ ...

Long-Term Growth Perspectives in Japan and the Euro Area

Euro area countries and Japan are confronted with similar challenges. Potential output is on a declining trend in the Euro area, and the decrease started well before the financial crisis. In Japan, low-output growth is a striking feature since many years, despite the unconventional monetary policy stance and numerous fiscal stimulus programs provided by the government. According to a growth accounting ...

Electrification of a City Bus Network: An Optimization Model for Cost-Effective Placing of Charging Infrastructure and Battery Sizing of Fast-Charging Electric Bus Systems

The deployment of battery-powered electric bus systems within the public transportation sector plays an important role in increasing energy efficiency and abating emissions. Rising attention is given to bus systems using fast charging technology. This concept requires a comprehensive infrastructure to equip bus routes with charging stations. The combination of charging infrastructure and bus batteries ...

Analyzing the Continuity of Attitudinal and Perceptual Indicators in Hybrid Choice Models

The main objective of this paper is to compare the consequences of treating the attitudinal and perceptual indicators of hybrid discrete choice (HDC) models as continuous or ordinal outcomes. Based on tradition and computational reasons, such indicators are still predominantly treated as continuous outcomes in practice. This usually neglects their nature (as respondents are normally asked to state ...

Cross-Border Effects of Capacity Mechanisms in Interconnected Power Systems

The cross-border effects of a capacity market and a strategic reserve in interconnected electricity markets are modeled using an agent-based modeling methodology. Both capacity mechanisms improve the security of supply and reduce consumer costs. Our results indicate that interconnections do not affect the effectiveness of a capacity market, while a strategic reserve is affected negatively. The neighboring ...