External refereed essays

Context, Health and Migration: A Systematic Review of Natural Experiments

Summary : Background Migration health research pays little attention to the places into which people migrate. Studies on health effects of contextual factors are often limited because of the ability of individuals to self-select their environment, but natural experiments may allow for the causal effect of contexts to be examined. The objective was to synthesise the evidence on contextual health effects ...

Effect of Area-Level Socioeconomic Deprivation on Mental and Physical Health: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment among Refugees in Germany

Existing studies on contextual health effects struggle to account for compositional bias, limiting causal interpretation. We use refugee dispersal in Germany as a natural experiment to study the effect of area-level socioeconomic deprivation on mental and physical health, while considering the potential mediating role of neighbourhood characteristics. Refugees subject to dispersal (n = 1466) are selected ...

Parents' Life Satisfaction Prior to and Following Preterm Birth

The current study tested whether the reported lower wellbeing of parents after preterm birth, relative to term birth, is a continuation of a pre-existing difference before pregnancy. Parents from Germany (the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, N = 10,649) and the United Kingdom (British Household Panel Study and Understanding Society, N = 11,012) reported their new-born’s birthweight and gestational ...

Gravity Models for Potential Spatial Healthcare Access Measurement: a Systematic Methodological Review

Background Quantifying spatial access to care—the interplay of accessibility and availability—is vital for healthcare planning and understanding implications of services (mal-)distribution. A plethora of methods aims to measure potential spatial access to healthcare services. The current study conducts a systematic review to identify and assess gravity model-type methods for spatial healthcare access ...

Stabilized Benders Decomposition for Energy Planning under Climate Uncertainty

The Long Way to Tax Transparency: Lessons from the Early Publishers of Country-by-Country Reports

In this paper, we analyse a sample of voluntarily published country-by-country reports (CbCRs) of 35 multinational enterprises (MNEs). We assess the value added and the limitations of qualitative and quantitative information provided in the reports based on a comparison to individual MNEs’ annual financial reports and aggregate CbCR data provided by the OECD. In terms of data quality, we find that ...

The Macroeconomic Impact of Increasing Investments in Malaria Control in 26 High Malaria Burden Countries: An Application of the Updated EPIC Model

Background Malaria remains a major public health problem. While globally malaria mortality affects predominantly young children, clinical malaria affects all age groups throughout life. Malaria not only threatens health but also child education and adult productivity while burdening government budgets and economic development. Increased investments in malaria control can contribute to reduce this burden ...

Indien: eine Alternative zu China?

Die Spannungen in der Weltwirtschaft und die Sorge um eine zu starke wirtschaftliche Abhängigkeit Europas von China rücken Indien in den Blickpunkt. Dort leben knapp 18 % der Weltbevölkerung in einer demokratischen Staatsform. Allerdings beträgt die Größe des Marktes bestenfalls ein Fünftel des chinesischen und die Demokratie wird – nach europäischem Verständnis – schwächer. Dennoch bietet die indische ...

Global Risk and the Dollar

The dollar is a safe-haven currency and appreciates when global risk goes up. We investigate the dollar’s role for the transmission of global risk to the world economy within a Bayesian proxy structural vector autoregressive model. We identify global risk shocks using high-frequency asset-price surprises around narratively selected events. Global risk shocks appreciate the dollar, induce tighter global ...

A Linear Reduced-Order Model for the Activated Sludge Process for the Integration into a Mixed-Integer Linear Energy System Optimisation Model

Conventional wastewater treatment plants consume significant amounts of electricity. The constant aeration of the wastewater in order to foster the growth of microorganisms or the pumping of wastewater are two examples for energy-intensive processes within a plant. Case studies have shown that switching off blowers and inlet pumps for a certain period of time is possible without a loss in water quality. ...

The Internationalisation of R&D: Past, Present and Future

In this perspective paper we discuss major trends that will shape the internationalisation of business R&D in the future. New scientific discoveries will provide new opportunities to innovate; the growing scientific capabilities in emerging economies will create new hot spots for relevant knowledge; new research activities will emerge from the need to combat climate change; digital technologies including ...

Access to Digital Finance: Equity Crowdfunding across Countries and Platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding in terms of the relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised per pitch. We examine heterogeneity in the average amount raised per pitch that is associated ...

The Long-Term Effects of Measles Vaccination on Earnings and Employment: A Replication Study of Atwood (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2022)

Atwood analyzes the effects of the 1963 U.S. measles vaccination on long-run labor market out-comes, using a generalized difference-in-differences approach. We reproduce the results of this paper and perform a battery of robustness checks. Overall, we confirm that the measles vaccination had positive labor market effects. While the negative effect on the likelihood of living in povertyand the positive ...

Examining Double Standards in Layoff Preferences and Expectations for Gender, Age, and Ethnicity When Violating the Social Norm of Vaccination

Whether vaccination refusal is perceived as a social norm violation that affects layoff decisions has not been tested. Also unknown is whether ascribed low-status groups are subject to double standards when they violate norms, experiencing stronger sanctions in layoff preferences and expectations, and whether work performance attenuates such sanctioning. Therefore, we study layoff preferences and expectations ...

Where Do They Care? The ECB in the Media and Inflation Expectations

This paper examines how news coverage of the European Central Bank (ECB) affects consumer inflation expectations in the four largest euro area countries. Utilizing a unique dataset of multilingual European news articles, we measure the impact of ECB-related inflation news on inflation expectations. Our results indicate that German and Italian consumers are more attentive to this news, whereas in Spain ...

Power Sector Effects of Green Hydrogen Production in Germany

The use of green hydrogen can support the decarbonization of sectors which are difficult to electrify, such as industry or heavy transport. Yet, the wider power sector effects of providing green hydrogen are not well understood so far. We use an open-source electricity sector model to investigate potential power sector interactions of three alternative supply chains for green hydrogen in Germany in ...

House Price Expectations

This study examines short-, medium-, and long-run price expectations in housing markets. At the heart of our analysis is the combination of data from a tailored in-person household survey, past sale offerings, satellite imagery on developable land, and an information treatment (RCT). As novel finding, we show that price expectations show no evidence for momentum-effects in the long run. We also do ...

Health of Parents, Their Children's Labor Supply, and the Role of Migrant Care Workers

We estimate the impact of parental health on adult children’s labor market out- comes. We focus on health shocks that increase care dependency abruptly. Our estimation strategy exploits the variation in the timing of shocks across treated families. Empirical results based on administrative data show a significant negative impact on the labor market activities of children. This effect is more pronounced for ...

Social Dynamics and Affect: Investigating Within-Person Associations in Daily Life Using Experience Sampling and Mobile Sensing

Social interactions are crucial to affective well-being. Still, people vary interindividually and intraindividually in their social needs. Social need regulation theories state that mismatches between momentary social desire and actual social contact result in lowered affect, yet empirical knowledge about this dynamic regulation is limited. In a gender- and age-heterogenous sample, German-speaking ...

Green or Greedy: The Relationship between Perceived Benefits and Homeowners’ Intention to Adopt Residential Low-carbon Technologies

Transitioning to a net-zero economy requires a nuanced understanding of homeowners’ decision-making pathways when considering the adoption of Low Carbon Technologies (LCTs). These LCTs present both personal and collective benefits, with positive perceptions critically influencing attitudes and intentions. Our study analyses the relationship between two primary benefits: the household-level financial ...