The economic gap between eastern and western Germany is still sizeable, even 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In terms of GDP per inhabitant and productivity, eastern Germany has attained nearly three-quarters of western German levels, respectively. Since some years, the catch-up process is advancing very slowly indeed. The main reason for low productivity is the lack of highly skilled jobs. ...
Der wirtschaftliche Rückstand Ostdeutschlands gegenüber Westdeutschland ist 25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Mauer immer noch groß. Beim Bruttoinlandsprodukt je Einwohner werden 71 Prozent und bei der Produktivität etwa drei Viertel des westdeutschen Niveaus erreicht. Der Aufholprozess kommt nur noch sehr langsam voran. Der entscheidende Grund für die geringe Produktivität ist der Mangel an hochqualifizierten ...
We examine how parental health shocks affect children's non-cognitive skills. Based on a German mother-and-child data base, we draw on significant changes in self-reported parental health as an exogenous source of health variation to identify effects on outcomes for children at ages of three and six years. At the age of six, we observe that maternal health shocks in the previous three years have significant ...
This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We show that a sufficient condition for identifying collusive behavior is a decline in the market share of RJV-participating firms. Using information from the U.S. National Cooperation Research Act, we estimate a market share equation correcting for the endogeneity of RJV participation and R&D expenditures. We find robust ...
The European Commission is currently overhauling the most important instrument for the regulation of cross-border flows of personal data, the Data Protection Directive of 1995 (Directive 95/46/EC). Among the most tedious legal issues is the use of personal data for secondary purposes. Such use occurs if data collected for one purpose (such as credit granting) are later used for another purpose (e.g. ...