External refereed essays

Cost Structure Surveys for Germany

Implementing the Kyoto Protocol without Russia

This paper examines implementation of the Kyoto Protocol without Russia. It concludes that implementation without Russia is possible, although it requires political will on the part of the countries that wish to proceed with the Protocol. It would lead to higher compliance costs for Annex B buyer regions, but other regions, except Russia, would benefit financially. Russia would forego revenue of at ...

Improving the Institutional Structures for Disseminating Energy Efficiency in Emerging Nations: A Case Study for Energy Agencies in South Africa

Emerging nations are typically characterised by highenergy intensities despite significant energy efficiency potentials and numerous project oriented efforts to introduce energy-efficient technologies. The paper argues that successful technology dissemination needs appropriate institutional structures to reduce the related transaction cost. While a project-by-project approach risks to evaporate after ...

What Is behind the Real Appreciation of the Accession Countries' Currencies? An Investigation of the PPI Based Real Exchange Rate

In the paper, we calculate real equilibrium exchange rates (EER) for EU accession countries and compare these with the actual exchange rate movements since the mid-1990s. The real equilibrium exchange rates are derived from models of macroeconomic balance and tested for econometrically. It is found that productivity increases can be regarded as one source of the observed PPI-based real appreciation ...

Income Mobility in Old Age in Britain and Germany

The increases in human longevity and early retirement in recent decades have posed new challenges for policy makers, and require a comprehensive understanding of the processes that influence the economic resources of older people. This paper examines the income mobility experienced by older people living in Britain and Germany during the 1990s, and identifies the influential personal attributes and ...

Nachhilfe als Strategie zur Verwirklichung von Bildungszielen: eine empirische Untersuchung der Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP)

Separate Spaces, Separate Outcomes? Neighbourhood Impacts on Minorities in Germany

In both the German and US literature on ethnic neighbourhoods, there is considerable debate as to whether living amongst co-ethnics hinders or furthers the integration process for immigrants. Using the detailed data on immigrant integration in the German Socio-economic Panel in combination with zip-code-level data on minority concentration and neighbourhood income levels, the research tests the extent ...

Transactions That Did Not Happen and Their Influence on Prices

This paper studies data from the wholesale fruit and vegetables market in Marseille. We have details of counteroffers to the prices that were proposed by the seller even when no transaction took place. We analyse the evolution of prices and the relation between the final price struck and the proposals of the two parties. Periods with no buyer refusals, of offers or bargaining with no transaction will ...

On-the-Job Search and the Wage Distribution

Strategic Use of Communication Technology: Diffusion Processes in Networks and Environments

Diffusion patterns of communication technology and the intensity of its use vary from enterprise to enterprise, from industry to industry and from country to country. This is partly due to differing potentials for strategic use. The paper identifies "strategic use" with the exploitation of the network character of the technology and thus contrasts it with "traditional use", where the integrative power ...

Konfliktuelle Integration? Die sozialen Konsequenzen der Lage der türkischen Bevölkerung in Deutschland und der nordafrikanischen Bevölkerung in Frankreich

Seit den 1980er Jahren gehören Konflikte mit einem ethnischen Hintergrund zur Alltagsrealität in Frankreich. In Deutschland fehlen dagegen weitgehend solche Konflikte. Ausgehend von Unterschieden im institutionellen Kontext der Integration von Zuwanderern in Deutschland und Frankreich untersucht der vorliegende Artikel die soziale Lage der türkischen Immigranten in Deutschland und der maghrebinischen ...

Wer erbt mehr? Erbschaften, Sozialstruktur und Alterssicherung

Welche Folgen haben Erbschaften für Sozialstruktur, Vermögensbildung und Alterssicherung? Wem kommen Erbschaften in besonderem Maße zugute? Die empirischen Analysen basieren auf Befragungsergebnissen des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels aus dem Jahre 2001. Sie liefern Informationen über Erblasser, Erbart, Erbzeit, Erbchance und Erbhöhe. Dabei werden die theoretischen Hypothesen generell bestätigt. Erbschaftsforschung ...

Explaining Income Nonresponse: A Case Study by Means of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS)

Many validation studies deal with item nonresponse and measurement error in earning data. In this paper, we explore motives of respondents for the failure to reveal earnings using the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). The BHPS collects socio-economic information of private households in Great Britain. We explain the evolution of income-nonresponse in the BHPS and demonstrate the importance of a ...

Rethinking the Dependent Variable in Voting Behavior: On the Measurement and Analysis of Electoral Utilities

As a dependent variable, party choice did not lend itself to analysis by means of powerful multivariate methods until the coming of discrete-choice models, most notably conditional logit and multinomial logit. These methods involve estimating effects on party preferences (utilities) that are post hoc derived from the data, but such estimates are plagued by a number of difficulties. These difficulties ...

Immigrant's Economic Performance across Europe: Does Immigration Policy Matter?

Drawing on panel data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we compare the economic performance of immigrants to Great Britain, West Germany, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Austria to that of the respective indigenous population. The unit of analysis is the individual in the household ...

How Much Market Do Market-Based Instruments Create? An Analysis for the Case of "White" Certificates

Among the diverse economic instruments to foster energy efficiency (EE) and climate protection, tradable certificates have been investigated for renewable energy, and the EU directive on an emissions-trading scheme for CO2 certificates has been approved in 2003. In contrast, tradable energy efficiency - or "white" - certificates have only lately been considered as a market-based tool to foster EE as ...

Household Taxation, Income Splitting and Labor Supply Incentives: A Microsimulation Study for Germany

We analyze potential labor supply effects of a shift from the current German system of joint taxation of married couples to a system of limited real income splitting on the basis of an econometric household labor supply model embedded in a tax benefit model. Our simulation results show relatively small labor supply effects of a shift from the current system to one of limited real income splitting system. ...

Barefoot and in a German Kitchen: Federal Parental Leave and Benefit Policy and the Return to Work after Childbirth in Germany

Since 1979 German federal maternity leave and benefit policy has given women incentives to stay at home and take care of their newborn and youngest children. In 1986 this leave and benefit policy was changed in several ways, turning it into a powerful instrument for delaying mothers' return to work after childbirth. Using a flexible duration dependence estimation technique for proportional hazards ...

Care of Children in a Low Fertility Setting: Transitions between Home and Market Care for Pre-School Children in Germany

Because it may affect a nation's fertility, child care policy is an important policy instrument for low-fertility countries. Designing an effective policy requires an understanding of the determinants of demand for child care. This study uses a descriptive statistical approach to analyze the dynamics of demand for child care for pre-school children in Germany. Age-specific and duration-specific hazard ...

Contests for Cooperation: A New Approach in German Innovation Policy

A new approach in German innovation policy organizes contests of proposals for developing innovation networks. Based on an overview of the different programs, we investigate the advantages and problems of such an approach. We find that this type of policy may have a relatively large impact and can, therefore, be regarded as a rather efficient instrument of innovation policy. Compared to conventional ...