External refereed essays

The Economic Effects of a Central Bank Reacting to House Price Inflation

What are the economic effects of a central bank that takes the evolution of house prices into account? In an attempt to answer this question, we use a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a housing sector to explore the economic impacts of a central bank reacting to house price inflation. We examine this in the context of two different shocks that are associated with two ...

On the Relevance of Exports for Regional Output Growth in China

Despite high economic growth during the past decades, China is still vulnerable to shocks arising from industrial states. The advanced economies strongly influence Chinese export performance, with subsequent effects on output growth. Using a production function, this article examines to which extent regional GDP growth in China is export driven. In a panel of 28 Chinese provinces, series are splitted ...

Welfare Effects of a Shift of Joint to Individual Taxation in the German Personal Income Tax

We empirically derive the welfare effects of a shift from joint to individual taxation of married households in Germany. For the welfare evaluation we estimate the preference heterogeneity and use normative welfare concepts proposed by Fleurbaey (2006) to address the difficulties of comparison between and aggregation of heterogeneous agents. Our results suggest that the normative choice of the welfare ...

Structural Vector Autoregressions: Checking Identifying Long-Run Restrictions via Heteroskedasticity

Long-run restrictions have been used extensively for identifying structural shocks in vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis. Such restrictions are typically just-identifying but can be checked by utilizing changes in volatility. This paper reviews and contrasts the volatility models that have been used for this purpose. Three main approaches have been used, exogenously generated changes in the unconditional ...

Risks and Returns to Educational Fields: A Financial Asset Approach to Vocational and Academic Education

Applying a financial assets approach, we analyze the returns and earnings risk of investments into different types of human capital. Even though the returns from investing in human capital are extensively studied, little is known about the properties of the returns to different types of human capital within a given educational path. Using information from the German Micro Census, we estimate the risk ...

Basil J. Moore's Horizontalists and Verticalists: An Appraisal 25 Years Later

In 1988 Basil Moore published his book Horizontalists and Verticalists: The Macroeconomics of Credit Money, which this year celebrates its 25th birthday. We discuss this book from today's perspective, and in particular whether Moore's main assertions have been validated or rejected by the development of central bank practice and academic monetary economics. We find that the book has impressively stood ...

Log versus Level in VAR Forecasting: 42 Million Empirical Answers - Expect the Unexpected

The use of log-transformed data has become standard in macroeconomic forecasting with VAR models. However, its appropriateness in the context of out-of-sample forecasts has not yet been exposed to a thorough empirical investigation. With the aim of filling this void, a broad sample of VAR models is employed in a multi-country set up and approximately 42 million pseudo-out-of-sample forecasts of GDP ...

How Learning a Musical Instrument Affects the Development of Skills

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the effects of extracurricular music activities on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time use and ambition using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our findings suggest that adolescents ...

Dealing with Uncertainty: The Illusion of Knowledge in the Study of Counterterrorism Effectiveness

Efforts to combat terrorism have become a priority in the security agenda of most countries around the world, while the respective policies, tools and instruments have amounted to significant costs. In this article, we review the literature on counterterrorism (CT) effectiveness and draw a series of rather negative conclusions with regard to the reliability of our knowledge in this area. We find that ...

Ein Überblick zu methodischen Fragen der Wegekostenrechnung

Bewertung der Angebotsmerkmale des Personenfernverkehrs vor dem Hintergrund der Liberalisierung des Fernbusmarktes

Cross-Border Banking, Bank Market Structures and Market Power: Theory and Cross-Country Evidence

Patterns in cross-border banking have changed since the global financial crisis. This may affect domestic bank market structures and macroeconomic stability in the longer term. In this study, I theoretically and empirically analyze how different modes of cross-border banking impact bank concentration and market power. I use a two-country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks developed ...

Global Warming, Technological Change and Trade in Carbon Energy: Challenge or Threat?

Is it possible to combat global climate change through North-to-South technology transfer even without a global climate treaty? Or do carbon leakage and the rebound effect imply that it is possible to take advantage of technological improvements under the umbrella of a global arrangement only? For answering these questions two possible states of the world are discussed: one, where more energy efficient ...

Two New Datasets on South-North Migration by Occupational Category

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to break down south-north migration along both the skill and the occupational dimension and thus to distinguish and compare several types of south-north migration and brain drain. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents south-north migration rates by occupational category at two distinct levels of disaggregation according to International Standard Classification ...

From Boom to Bust? A Critical Look at US Shale Gas Projections

U.S. shale gas production is generally expected to continue its fast rise of the last years. However, a cautious evaluation is needed. Shale gas resources are potentially overestimated and it is uncertain to what extent they can be economically produced. The adverse environmental effects of ever more wells being drilled may lead to a fall in public acceptance and the strengthening of U.S. regulation. ...

Affect Dynamics across the Lifespan: With Age, Heart Rate Reacts Less Strongly, but Recovers More Slowly from Unpleasant Emotional Situations

We propose that a comprehensive understanding of age differences in affective responses to emotional situations requires the distinction of 2 components of affect dynamics: reactivity, the deviation from a person’s baseline, and recovery, the return to this baseline. The present study demonstrates the utility of this approach with a focus on age differences inresponses of negative affect and heart ...

Remittances and the Human Capital of Children: New Evidence from Kyrgyzstan during Revolution and Financial Crisis, 2005–2009

We analyze the effect of the receipt of remittances on the education and health of children in Kyrgyzstan during a volatile period of their recent history, 2005–2009. The country experienced revolution in 2005 and the global financial crisis beginning in 2008. Both events impact human capital investment, and the changes vary by region of the country. We use fixed effects estimation and fixed effects, ...

Power System Transformation toward Renewables: An Evaluation of Regulatory Approaches for Network Expansion

We analyze various regulatory regimes for electricity transmission investment in the context of a power system transformation toward renewable energy. Distinctive developments of the generation mix are studied, assuming that a shift toward renewables may have temporary or permanent impacts on network congestion. We specifically analyze the relative performance of a combined merchant-regulatory price-cap ...

Removing Cross-Border Capacity Bottlenecks in the European Natural Gas Market: A Proposed Merchant-Regulatory Mechanism

We propose a merchant-regulatory framework to promote investment in the European natural gas network infrastructure based on a price cap over two-part tariffs. As suggested by Vogelsang (J Regul Econ 20:141–165, 2001) and Hogan et al. (J Regul Econ38:113–143, 2010), a profit maximizing network operator facing this regulatory constraint will intertemporally rebalance the variable and fixed part of its ...

Integrated Care Experiences and Outcomes in Germany, the Netherlands, and England

Care for people with chronic conditions is an issue of increasing importance in industrialized countries. This article examines three recent efforts at care coordination that have been evaluated but not yet included in systematic reviews. The first is Germany'sGesundes Kinzigtal, a population-based approach that organizes care across all health service sectors and indications in a targeted region. ...