External refereed essays

Too Much of a Good Thing? A Theory of Short-Term Debt as a Sorting Device

This paper shows that the liquidity risk associated with short-term debt financing can be used to sort insolvent firms out of financial markets when their solvency risk is private information. Notwithstanding this sorting role of short-term debt, unregulated financial firms tend to choose an inefficiently short debt maturity structure. This inefficiency arises for two reasons. First, by issuing more ...

Does the Presence of Wind Turbines Have Negative Externalities for People in Their Surroundings? Evidence from Well-Being Data

Throughout the world, governments foster the deployment of wind power to mitigate negative externalities of conventional electricity generation, notably CO2 emissions. Wind turbines, however, are not free of externalities themselves, particularly interference with landscape aesthetics. We quantify these negative externalities using the life satisfaction approach. To this end, we combine household data ...

Measuring the Consistency of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Income Information in EU-SILC

The EU-wide survey “Statistics on Income and Living Conditions” (EU-SILC) is extremely important for international social science research and policy advice. It is therefore crucial to ensure that the data are of the highest quality and international comparability. This paper is aimed at identifying unexpected developments in income levels, income mobility, and inequality in the EU-SILC data between ...

Prosumage of Solar Electricity: Pros, Cons, and the System Perspective

We examine the role of prosumage of solar electricity, i.e. PV self-generation combined with distributed storage, in the context of the low-carbon energy transformation. First, we devise a qualitative account of arguments in favor of and against prosumage. Second, we give an overview of prosumage in Germany. Prosumage will likely gain momentum as support payments expire for an increasing share of PV ...

Currency Value

We assess the properties of currency value strategies based on real exchange rates. We find that real exchange rates have predictive power for the cross-section of currency excess returns. However, adjusting real exchange rates for key country-specific fundamentals (productivity, the quality of export goods, net foreign assets, and output gaps) better isolates information related to the currency risk ...

On Differentiating Adaptation from Disposition Concepts: The Case of Age-Associated Dynamics of Life Satisfaction ; Commentary

Introduction of Nodal Pricing into the New Mexican Electricity Market through FTR Allocations

The change from a subsidized zonal pricing system to a full nodal pricing regime in the new Mexican electricity market could improve the efficiency of electricity system operation. However, resulting price modifications might also swing surplus across producers and consumers. In this paper, we calculate nodal prices for the Mexican power system and further analyze how allocations of financial transmission ...

Cohort Differences in Psychosocial Function over 20 Years: Current Older Adults Feel Less Lonely and Less Dependent on External Circumstances

Background: Lifespan psychological and life course sociological perspectives indicate that individual development is shaped by social and historical circumstances. Increases in fluid cognitive performance over the last century are well documented and researchers have begun examining historical trends in personality and subjective well-being in old age. Relatively less is known about secular changes ...

Estimating Risky Behavior with Multiple-Item Risk Measures

We compare seven established risk elicitation methods and investigate how robustly they explain eleven kinds of risky behavior with 760 individuals. Risk measures are positively correlated; however, their performance in explaining behavior is heterogeneous and, therefore, difficult to assess ex ante. Greater diversification across risk measures is conducive to closing this knowledge gap. What we find ...

Indirect Fiscal Effects of Long-Term Care Insurance

Informal care by close family members is the main pillar of most long-term care systems. However, due to demographic ageing, the need for long-term care is expected to increase while the informal care potential is expected to decline. From a budgetary perspective, informal care is often viewed as a cost-saving alternative to subsidised formal care. This view, however, neglects that many family carers ...

Information Acquisition in Vertical Relations

We analyse a simple supply chain with one supplier, one retailer and uncertainty about market demand. Focusing on the incentives of the supplier and the retailer to enhance their private information about the actual market conditions, we show that choices on information acquisition are strategic complements. While the retailer’s incentives are mainly driven by the information rent that he can earn, ...

Convergence or Divergence? Educational Discrepancies in Work-Care Arrangements of Mothers with Young Children in Germany

This study examines how educational differences in work-care patterns among mothers with young children in Germany changed between 1997 and 2013. Since the mid-2000s, Germany has undergone a paradigm shift in parental leave and childcare policies. Our comparative analysis of East and West Germany provides new evidence on whether the long-standing gender regime differences interact with recent developments ...

Austerity and Private Debt

This study provides empirical evidence that the costs of austerity crucially depend on the level of private indebtedness. In particular, fiscal consolidations lead to severe contractions when implemented in high private-debt states. Contrary, fiscal consolidations have no significant effect on economic activity when private debt is low. These results are robust to alternative definitions of private-debt ...

Primenenie cenovoj diskriminacii na pervicnom rynke kvartir v rossii

The paper explores practical issues of using price discrimination in the markets of new apartments.First, we discuss various strategies of price discrimination which may be applied byconstruction companies to increase revenue (i. e. discrimination by observable characteristics orby self-selection). Then we suggest an approach for empirical estimation of possibility of pricediscrimination in this market, ...

Bridging the Industrial Energy Efficiency Gap: Assessing the Evidence from the Italian White Certificate Scheme

The Italian white certificate scheme is the main national policy instrument to incentivise energy efficiency of the industrial sector, with savings from white certificates amounting to 2% of Italy's 2012 primary energy consumption. The mechanism sets binding energy-saving targets on electricity and gas distributors with at least 50,000 clients and includes a voluntary opt-in model for participation ...

The Effectiveness of a Strategic Reserve in the Presence of a High Portfolio Share of Renewable Energy Sources

To ensure sufficient investment in electricity generation capacity, mechanisms such as strategic reserves are being considered or already implemented. We analyze the effectiveness of a strategic reserve in the presence of a growing portfolio share of renewable energy sources (RES) with EMLab-Generation, an agent-based electricity market model. A strategic reserve can stabilize investment, but within ...

The PIAAC Longitudinal Study in Germany: Rationale and Design

In Germany, the respondents who had participated in the 2012 survey of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) were re-approached for the panel study PIAAC-L. PIAAC-L aims at investigating the longitudinal effects of skill outcomes over the life course and the development of the key skills assessed in PIAAC. Moreover, additional and alternative background information ...

The Long Arm of Childhood Circumstances on Health in Old Age: Evidence from SHARELIFE

Socioeconomic status (SES) and health during childhood have been consistently observed to be associated with health in old age in many studies. However, the exact mechanisms behind these two associations have not yet been fully understood. The key challenge is to understand how childhood SES and health are associated. Furthermore, data on childhood factors and life course mediators are sometimes unavailable, ...

Euro Area Government Bonds: Fragmentation and Contagion during the Sovereign Debt Crisis

The paper analyzes the integration of euro area sovereign bond markets during the European sovereign debt crisis. It tests for contagion (i.e., an intensification in the transmission of shocks across countries), fragmentation (a reduction in spillovers) and flight-to-quality patterns, exploiting the heteroskedasticity of intraday changes in bond yields for identification. The paper finds that euro ...

Cognitive Skills, Non-cognitive Skills, and Family Background: Evidence from Sibling Correlations

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model indicates a strong relationship between family background and skill formation. Sibling correlations in non-cognitive ...