External refereed essays

Tropical Cyclone Losses in the USA and the Impact of Climate Change: A Trend Analysis Based on Data from a New Approach to Adjusting Storm Losses

Economic losses caused by tropical cyclones have increased dramatically. Historical changes in losses are a result of meteorological factors (changes in the incidence of severe cyclones, whether due to natural climate variability or as a result of human activity) and socio-economic factors (increased prosperity and a greater tendency for people to settle in exposed areas). This paper aims to isolate ...

Die reformierte Gründungsförderung für Arbeitslose: Chancen und Risiken

Naturalization Proclivities, Ethnicity and Integration

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of naturalization of non-EU immigrant household heads with a fresh look at the role of integration and ethnicity. Design/methodology/approach - Employing data on immigrant household heads from the German Socioeconomic Panel differentiation is made among those who already have been naturalized, those who plan to take citizenship, and those ...

Attitudes towards Immigrants, Other Integration Barriers, and Their Veracity

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study opinions and attitudes towards immigrants and minorities and their interactions with other barriers to minorities' economic integration. Specifically, the minority experts' own perceptions about these issues, the veracities and repercussions of unfavorable attitudes of natives are to be considered. Design/methodology/approach - Employing newly available ...

Ethnic Identity and Immigrant Homeownership

Immigrants are much less likely to own their homes than natives, even after controlling for a broad range of life-cycle and socioeconomic characteristics and housing market conditions. This paper extends the analysis of immigrant housing tenure choice by explicitly accounting for ethnic identity as a potential influence on the homeowner-ship decision, using a two-dimensional composite index of ethnic ...

Scale, Diversity, and Determinants of Labour Migration in Europe

While global migration is increasing, internal EU migration flows have only increased slowly. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the determinants and scale of European migration. It surveys previous historical experiences and empirical findings including the recent Eastern enlargements. The determinants of migration before and after the 2004 enlargement and in the EU15 and EU10 countries ...

Representing GASPEC with the World Gas Model

This paper presents results of simulating a more collusive behavior of a group of natural gas producing and exporting countries, sometimes called GASPEC. We use the World Gas Model, a dynamic, strategic representation of world gas production, trade, and consumption between 2005 and 2030. In particular, we simulate a closer cooperation of the GASPEC countries when exporting pipeline gas and liquefied ...

Estimating the Marginal Costs of Airport Operation Using Multivariate Time Series Models with Correlated Error Terms

This paper explores insights about marginal airport costs that can be gained by analysing labour inputs and their variability. Based on hourly cost and traffic data for the airport of Helsinki, a multivariate time series approach is used incorporating correlated error terms to account for random shocks such as delays. We found for most airport services a linear relationship between labour input and ...

Linking Natural Gas Markets - Is LNG Doing Its Job?

The increase in liquefied natural gas trade has accelerated the integration of previously segmented markets in North America, Europe, and Asia. This paper provides evidence on the integration of the transatlantic natural gas market; it thus complements other papers in the EMF 23 study that focus on prices and international natural gas trade. We test the theoretical proposition that in integrating markets ...

Perspectives of the European Natural Gas Markets until 2025

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic several-layer model of European natural gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European country (or region), and final demand. Our model results suggest rather modest changes in the overall ...

Stability and Change of Well Being: An Experimentally Enhanced Latent State-Trait-Error Analysis

This study uses longitudinal panel data and short-term retest data from the same respondents in the German Socio-economic Panel to estimate the contribution of state and trait variance to the reliable variance in judgments of life satisfaction and domain satisfaction. The key finding is that state and trait variance contribute approximately equally to the reliable variance in well being measures. Most ...

The Impact of Child and Maternal Health Indicators on Female Labor Force Participation after Childbirth: Evidence for Germany

This paper analyzes the influence of child health and maternal physical and mental health on female labor force participation after childbirth in Germany. Our analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, which enables us to measure child health based on the occurrence of severe health problems including mental and physical disabilities, hospitalizations, and preterm ...

Obesity and Skill Attainment in Early Childhood

This paper investigates the association between obesity and skill attainment in early childhood (aged 2-3 years). Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to estimate models of developmental functioning in four critical areas (verbal skills, activities of daily living, motor skills, and social skills) as a function of various measures of weight (including body mass index and obesity) ...

A Privacy-Protecting Business-Analytics Service for On-Line Transactions

Analysis of consumer-related and consumer-generated data is a very important way to measure the success of on-line retailing. The software packages for data analysis have two major shortcomings: (1) solutions are not offered as a service reachable by standard procedures over the Internet, but as isolated standalone applications or ERP system modules; (2) privacy restrictions need to be integrated into ...

Immigrants and Social Networks in a Job-Scarce Environment: The Case of Germany

Though information about jobs passed through personal networks has been central to the labor market integration of immigrants in the United States, its role in the economic absorption of immigrants in Germany, where jobs are scarcer and employers more likely to demand formal qualifications, is less clear. Through analysis of German Socio-Economic Panel data, we discovered that nearly half of all immigrant-origin ...

Cognitive Abilities and Earnings: First Evidence for Germany

We provide first evidence on the relationship between cognitive abilities and earnings in Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Study. The estimates suggest that mechanics abilities are positively related to wages of West German workers, even when educational attainment is controlled for. Pragmatics of cognition are not related to earnings. In line with studies for other countries, ...

Does Smoking Really Harm Your Earnings So Much? Biases in Current Estimates of the Smoking Wage Penalty

Empirical studies on the earnings effects of tobacco use have found significant wage penalties attached to smoking. This article produces evidence that suggests that these estimates are significantly upward biased. The bias arises from a general failure in the literature to control for past smoking behaviour of individuals. Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regressions show that the smoking wage penalty ...

Traditional Regulatory Approaches and the Postal Service Market

The Impact of Socio-economics and Climate Change on Tropical Cyclone Losses in the USA

Tropical cyclones that make landfall on the coast of the USA are causing increasing economic losses. It is assumed that the increase in losses is largely due to socio-economic developments, i.e. growing wealth and greater settlement of exposed areas. However, it is also thought that the rise in losses is caused by increasing frequency of severe cyclones resulting from climate change, whether due to ...

Der Emissionshandel in Deutschland und Österreich: ein wirksames Instrument des Klimaschutzes?