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Applying a BVAR model, the present paper first identifies the possible drivers of Germany's TARGET claims. In this context, in terms of potential causes, a distinction is made between a rise in the global risk assessment, tensions within the euro area, and European monetary policy. It becomes evident that the TARGET flows between 2015 and 2017 can be ascribed in large part to monetary policy and to a minor extent to the risk assessment within the euro area. At the peak of the European debt crisis between 2010 and mid-2012, the TARGET flows were affected by uncertainty in the euro area as a dominant factor, although global factors also played a key role according to the model. The BVAR model we use opens up the possibility of studying the causes of current fluctuations in Germany's TARGET claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate whether households change electricity consumption after they switch to a green electricity tariff. Using metered data of household electricity consumption from a large provider of green electricity in Germany, our quasi-experimental analysis finds that household switching to a green tariff leads to a non-monetary renewable rebound effect of around 7.7%. Further, our findings imply that this renewable rebound effect is persistent over at least four years. These findings are observationally consistent with moral licencing effects which induce households to permanently change their habitual behaviours and/or to acquire additional electricity-consuming technologies. Thus, failure to account for a renewable rebound in policy evaluation may lead to systematically underestimate the costs of achieving energy and climate targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the reasons for the gaps in post-schooling transitions between migrant and native pupils in Germany. While differences in parental background or skills partly explain the gaps, they are not sufficient. Conditional on these factors, there is a 'polarization' of educational choices: migrants are more likely to attend tertiary education, less likely to attend vocational education, and more likely to end without qualified training than their background and skills would predict. This is driven by the migrants' more academic career aspirations and expectations before leaving school. On the one hand, these higher ambitions allow high-skilled migrants to achieve tertiary education despite their less favourable background. On the other hand, low-skilled migrants who in Germany's tracked school system do not have the option to enter tertiary education, may be diverted from vocational training as a more viable alternative. Finally, possible explanations for the different career plans are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies regional economic development on the municipality-level in Poland and Germany along the Oder–Neisse border. We use high-quality satellite night-time light intensity data as an innovative and comparable measure to proxy for overall economic activity on both sides of the border consistently over a long period of time (1992–2012). We use descriptive heat maps as well as regression analysis to investigate two aspects: first, how far is the economic convergence along the Polish-German border? Second, what effect does the distance to the border have on economic activity as measured with light emissions? Our findings suggest that convergence in overall activity across the border has been complete. Polish municipalities that used to be economically much weaker have caught up with those on the German side of the Oder and the Neisse rivers. As regards the importance of distance, we highlight different results for Germany and Poland. While distance to the border never mattered significantly for German regions, Polish municipalities closer to the border used to be substantially worse off in the early 1990s but caught up with regions further to the east by the end of the period of our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper econometrically estimates residential water consumption in Germany between 2007 and 2013 based on a panel of almost 3000 supply areas. In particular, the analysis distinguishes periods of rising and falling water and sewage water prices. The short-run (long-run) price elasticity is estimated at around 4.2% (13%), but water demand appears to respond asymmetrically to rising and falling prices. When prices are rising, the short-run (long-run) price elasticity is around 6.5% (17%). When prices are falling, the short-run price elasticity is not statistically different from zero, and the long-run price elasticity is estimated at around 12%. Additional results illustrate that employing average prices instead of marginal prices results in substantially overestimating the price elasticity. These findings are particularly relevant for utilities and regulators planning to alter the tariff structure towards a higher fixed fee and a lower volumetric fee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The riskiness of individuals' saving behaviour affects their old-age wealth and has wider-ranging implications for macroeconomic development and stability. To which extent individuals take financial risks depends on their preferences, which may be moulded by the economic system they live in. I analyse households' financial risk taking after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic. Conditional on their income and financial wealth positions, East German households were more prone to financial risk taking than West German households after reunification. The differences in risk taking were quantitatively relevant shortly after reunification and gradually vanished until 2008. Risk taking of households who were exposed to the socialist system longer was higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs multivariate panel cointegration techniques to re-examine the empirical relationship between bilateral real exchange rates and real interest rates. The results from a panel of 1470 quarterly observations on Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and USA over the period 1977 to 1994 indicate the absence of any long-run relationship between the two variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical technological progress has been shown to be the main driver of health care costs. A key policy question is whether new treatment options are worth the additional costs. In this analysis we assess the causal effect of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), a major new heart attack treatment, on mortality. We use a full sample of administrative hospital data from Germany for the years 2005 to 2007. To account for non-random treatment assignment of PTCA, instrumental variable approaches are implemented that aim to randomize patients into getting PTCA independent of heart attack severity. Instruments include differential distances to PTCA hospitals and regional PTCA rates. Our results suggest a 4.5 absolute percentage point mortality reduction for patients who have access to PTCA compared to patients receiving only conservative treatment. We relate mortality reduction to the additional costs for this treatment and conclude that PTCA treatment is cost-effective in lowering mortality for AMI patients at reasonable cost-effectiveness thresholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land market regulations are often justified by the assumption that activities of foreign and non-agricultural investors drive up prices in domestic land markets. However, empirical knowledge about the dynamics of agricultural land prices across borders is sparse. Using the German reunification as a natural experiment, we study the effect of the former inner German border on the dynamics of agricultural land prices in East and West Germany. We apply a land price diffusion model with an error correction specification to analyse spatial agricultural land markets. A novel feature of our model is its ability to distinguish price diffusion within states and across state borders. We provide evidence for a persistent border effect given that the fraction of spatially integrated counties is larger within states than across the former border. Moreover, we observe non-significant error correction terms for many counties along the former border. From a policy perspective, it is striking to realize that even 25 years after German reunification, pronounced land price differences persist. It is quite likely that price diffusion through existing borders within the EU would take even more time given language barriers, different institutional frameworks, and information asymmetries between domestic and foreign market participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Germany, retraining is an important measure in active labour market policy, providing unemployed individuals with extensive vocational training. Using administrative data, we show that retraining participants are more likely to take up jobs that require their educational degree and are more often employed in those occupations for which they have received vocational training. Moreover, retraining leads to higher earnings. As these effects may be driven by the positive impact of retraining on employment, we additionally try to isolate the direct effect by restricting our analyses to those formerly unemployed who find employment irrespective of participation in retraining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the financial crisis of 2007, the Economic Sentiment Indicator for Germany had already started the deepest drop in its history, reaching a new historical low in the second quarter of 2009. The drop was only temporary, as Germany became the de facto 'safe heaven' country and thus within 2 years the low became a sharp increase reaching a historical all-time high. The effect of 'safe heaven' country that Germany exhibited during the crisis and the resulting numbers for economic sentiment pose the question as to whether economic sentiment can be used to improve the positioning on the German financial market. We examine the link between sentiment and the performance of the German market, and how investors' herd behaviour should have used such a sentiment signal to take advantage of, during the depression and beyond. We perform a careful sample-split analysis of both the characteristics of sentiment and financial market performance in various sub-periods from the 1990s until today and also use economic sentiment as a guide for timing the German stock market. In our analysis, economic sentiment acquires a leading guide role for investors in the German market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a cash-in-advance model of an open economy. Following the contribution of Bohn (1991) and using intertemporal balance of payments theory we set up a currency demand function with real consumption expenditure, the foreign interest rate and exchange rate expectations as the core explaining variables. We test the model with the aid of the econometric techniques proposed by Hylleberg, Engle, Granger and Yoo (1990) and Engle, Granger, Hylleberg and Lee (1993) relying on quarterly seasonally unadjusted data for Germany in the period 1960: 1 to 1993: 4. The findings reported in the paper support the suggestions made by the theoretical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We wish to reconcile the major trends in wages and the terms of trade using a directed technical change approach in which: (i) tradable and nontradable goods can be substitutes or complements; and (ii) scale effects can be present or can be partially or totally removed. With a lower skilled labour ratio and a higher relative wage in the tradable sector, the price (real exchange rate or terms of trade) mechanism is crucial in determining sectoral productivity differences and thus wage inequality. Along the balanced growth path, the real exchange rate can be negatively related with the relative productivities in horizontal innovation (the Balassa-Samuelson effect) and with the relative labour level, depending on scale effects. The wage premium increases due to an increase in the relative labour level in the nontradable sector under substitutability with scale effects or under complementarity without scale effects. A calibrated version of the model indicates that the model closely replicates the data for Germany. Moreover, while the Balassa-Samuelson effect is quantified, an increase in the relative supply of labour in the tradable sector decreases both terms of trade and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I analyse the joint efficiency of export and import forecasts by leading economic research institutes for the years 1970 to 2017 for Germany in a multivariate setting. To this end, I compute, in a first step, multivariate random forests in order to model links between forecast errors and a forecaster's information set, consisting of several trade and other macroeconomic predictor variables. I use the Mahalanobis distance as performance criterion and, in a second step, permutation tests to check whether the Mahalanobis distance between the predicted forecast errors for the trade forecasts and actual forecast errors is significantly smaller than under the null hypothesis of forecast efficiency. I find evidence for joint forecast inefficiency for two forecasters, however, for one forecaster I cannot reject joint forecast efficiency. For the other forecasters, joint forecast efficiency depends on the examined forecast horizon. I find evidence that real macroeconomic variables as opposed to trade variables are inefficiently included in the analysed trade forecasts. Finally, I compile a joint efficiency ranking of the forecasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2003, the number and ratio of multiple jobholders has more than doubled, although the German labour market has been experiencing a strong and sustained upswing. This study analyses multiple jobholding from a time series as well as a cross section perspective. We use rich register data and multinomial logit estimations. The microeconometric findings are linked to macroeconomic trends. Workers hold multiple jobs primarily because of earnings´ or hours´ constraints in the main job. Towards the upper end of the earnings distribution, the probability to have another job does not rise again. Thus, we do not find evidence that another job shall enrich the job portfolio as such. Moreover, female workers, migrants, workers in West Germany as well as in service sectors have a higher than average probability of multiple jobholding. However, the individual factors explain the rise of multiple jobholding over time to a very small extent. Hence, we argue that the far-reaching exemption of second marginal jobs from social security contributions and taxes sets wrong incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a Bayesian VAR (BVAR) to demonstrate that the recent boom in German house prices can be explained by falling interest rates and that higher interest rates are likely sufficient to stop the price increase. The latter suggests a potential drawback of the current monetary policy of the ECB. The BVAR's prior information shrinks the model parameters towards a parsimonious benchmark in order to avoid overfitting the data. We use an empirical Bayes approach to select the informativeness of the prior. To choose relevant control variables, we use a Bayesian variable selection approach. In addition to impulse responses and variance decompositions, we use a Bayesian conditional forecast to test the hypothetical effect of an interest rate increase on house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-employment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. The intuition behind this proposition is that entrepreneurs must have sufficient knowledge in a variety of areas to put together the many ingredients needed for survival and success in a business, while for paid employees it suffices and pays to be a specialist in the field demanded by the job taken. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing Lazear's hypothesis using a large recent representative sample of the German population. The empirical estimation takes the rare events nature of becoming a nascent entrepreneur and the regional stratification of the sample into account. The results illustrate the statistical significance and economic importance of the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs four cointegration test approaches, PO, HI, JJ and KSS, to test for pairwise long-run equilibrium relationships between Taiwan's stock price index and each of the stock price indexes of four European markets – French, German, Dutch, and British stock markets. The results from these four tests are robust and clearly consistent in suggesting that the Taiwan stock market is not pairwise cointegrated with the four European stock markets. This provides strong evidence that there exist long-run benefits for Taiwan investors diversifying in the equity markets of Taiwan's major European trading partners, France, Germany, Holland, and the UK, over the sample period considered from 6 January 1998 to 30 May 2002. These findings could be valuable to Taiwan individual investors and financial institutions holding long-run investment portfolios in the equity markets of France, Germany, Holland, and the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to improve estimations of the size and scope of the underground economy by introducing a new approach that combines the advantages of the two most commonly used approaches, i.e. currency demand and multiple indicators, multiple causes (MIMIC). The new approach is applied to Germany. Among other things, it is shown that the approach yields improved estimation results. Some policy perspectives are discussed in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a dynamic duopolistic model of advertising and price competition. Advertising accumulates a stock of goodwill which enters directly into the demand functions and both the cooperative and predatory effects of advertising are considered. It is shown that firms invest more in advertising the higher the degree of cooperativeness of advertising and some comparative static results are provided. In the second, empirical part of the article, estimations of the demand equations are presented using data from the German automobile industry. The main conclusion drawn is that advertising plays an important role in this market and has a predatory nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests for business cycle symmetry in G7 countries during the post-World War II period using a number of tests, each reflecting alternative definitions of business cycle asymmetry. The tests are applied to monthly coincident economic indicators of business cycles. This found that business cycles in the US are characterized by both longitudinal (deepness) and transversal (steepness and sharpness) asymmetries: further, it is found that asymmetric transition probabilties and time irreversibility are due to nonlinearities. On the contrary, business cycles in Germany exhibits a symmetric behaviour. Between these extremes are the other countries, for which at least one of the tests here considered rejects the null of cyclical symmetry. Particularly, business cycle is characterized by deepness and sharpness in Canada, asymmetry in persistence in France and Japan, and asymmetric transition probabilities in France and United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many theoretical analyses of the sources of economic growth focus on knowledge spillovers and scale economies to explain growth endogenously. The contribution of this paper is to shed some light on these arguments by an empirical investigation based on a production function framework. Sectoral production functions are estimated with annual German data of 51 sectors from 1960-90. The estimates reveal that both a pure Solow growth model and a Solow model augmented with human capital cannot account for the observed productivity increases. The model should be extended by allowing for inter-industry spillovers and scale economies at the aggregate level, as well as for scale economies associated with human capital at the sectoral level. The business cycle affects observed productivity changes in the short run and in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several empirical studies show that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, typically supplied at low marginal cost, can cause electricity market prices to fall. Recent theoretical research and simulations also highlight the link between the integration of renewable energy and market performance in an oligopolistic energy market. This article looks at these dynamics in the context of cross-border effects between two highly interconnected electricity markets, France and Germany. Using a rich panel dataset for hourly data from November 2009 to July 2015, I estimate the impact of German wind and solar power production on both prices and market power in the French wholesale market. The findings highlight the importance of coordinating energy policies via joint renewable energy support schemes among interconnected European electricity markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the higher education sectors, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences, we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. We separate short-term and long-term efficiency while controlling for unobserved institution-specific heterogeneity. We argue that the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, while the second term echoes the influence of the overall country-specific higher education structure. The cross-country comparison displays whether efficiency differences between countries are related to the individual performance of their universities or their higher education structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendations and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples, we show that the Italian higher education sector exhibits a higher overall efficiency value. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the remaining inefficiency and the gap between the countries are caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. Future measures should hence aim at the country-specific structure and not solely at the activities of single universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On several occasions, the 1980s witnessed non-Keynesian effects of fiscal contractions. Most notably, cuts in government spending in Ireland, Denmark and Germany are known to have coincided with increases in private consumption spending. Self-fulfilling expectations about the effects of stabilization policies may explain these and a diversity of opposing experiences. This paper formulates a dynamic stochastic equilibrium model with equilibrium indeterminacy, which allows for sunspot fluctuations as well as for systematic consumption effects of government policy in either direction. Cointegration tests and Euler equation estimates suggest that the model is approximately in accord with German data. Parameter estimates imply that the non-Keynesian experiences are not due to self-fulfilling expectations but to the productivity effects of government-provided infrastructure services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has attracted considerable attention during the last few decades as an intuitively clear method for performance assessment. Theoretical developments have taken turns with empirical efficiency studies. In this paper we empirically analyse performance differences across university libraries from different countries from a cross-section and a longitudinal perspective. We use the Malmquist index approach to disentangle environmental efficiency from technical efficiency (TE) to highlight performance differences eventually induced by environmental factors beyond the control of library management, as well as to decompose productivity changes over time into changes in TE and changes in technology. In our cross-section analysis we found that North American (NA) libraries are more productive at higher input levels than the European libraries from Germany and Austria at which we looked in this contribution. Moreover, the largest NA libraries are still able to improve performance, as the results of panel data analysis revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a semi-structural modelling approach to study asymmetric monetary transmission in Europe. A system of dynamic equations containing reaction functions for monetary policy as well as output gap and inflation equations is simultaneously estimated for France, Germany and Italy. We find asymmetries on the demand side in the strength of interest rate transmission and on the supply side in the effects of the output gap on inflation. The responses are similar in Germany and Italy and generally stronger than in France. Out-of-sample tests do not find a structural break in the transmission mechanisms prior to the establishment of the European Monetary Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the determinants of household work contracted in the German shadow economy. The German socio-economic household panel, which enumerates casual domestic employment, is used to estimate the demand for such household work. The regressors include regional wage rates, household income and several control variables for household composition. It is found that the demand for household work in the shadow economy is very income elastic. This suggests that targeted wage subsidies, linked to household work agencies, would be very effective in raising the legal demand for domestic help. A wage subsidy of 50% of wage costs could thus establish up to 500  000 new jobs for previously unemployed or non-working low skilled workers. The net fiscal costs of such a scheme are about 6.200 Euro per full-time job. In addition, society benefits from more law enforcement and from a raised female labour supply, especially by highly qualified mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the role played by private equity investors (venture capital companies and corporate investors) in the emergence of a new biotechnology industry in Germany in the second half of the 90's. Our analysis takes into account the different business models and business fields to be found in the biotechnology industry. Based on theoretical arguments, a great relevance of venture capital companies (VCC) in financing young innovative biotechnology firms developing health care applications and technology platforms is expected, whereas corporate investors like incumbents in pharmaceutical and chemical industries may play a more important role in financing supplier companies. The empirical analysis is based on 378 biotechnology firms, founded between 1995 and 1999. Descriptive results emphasize a crucial importance of the access to venture capital provided by venture capital companies: VCC are venturing partner of 42 percent of healthcare developer in their early stage. Opposite to that, corporate investors are marginally involved as venturing partner of high risk projects. The observed pattern also holds in a multivariate analysis which controls for some core variables as determinants of equity funding. The result for corporate investors differs from observations in the US for collaborative arrangements. Therefore, country specific settings may matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of German public start-up assistance programmes administered by the Deutsche Ausgleichsbank (DtA) on the performance of young firms. The empirical analysis is based on firms from the ZEW Entrepreneurship Study that either received start-up loans in one or more DtA schemes or did not receive any funding from the DtA at all. The paper applies a non-parametric matching approach often applied by labour market economists. The interesting success measure is the average annual employment growth rate over a six year period and the resulting causal effect is the difference of this measure between the group of subsidized firms and the selected control group firms that did not receive any DtA start-up loans. The empirical analysis shows that DtA start-up loans significantly improve the average employment growth rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of career mobility (Sicherman and Galor, Journal of Political Economy, 98 (1), 169-92, 1990) claims that wage penalties for overeducated workers are compensated by better promotion prospects. Sicherman (Journal of Labour Economics, 9 (2), 101-22, 1991) was able to confirm this theory in an empirical study using panel data. However, the only retest using panel data so far (Robst, Eastern Economic Journal, 21, 539-50, 1995) produced rather ambiguous results. In the present paper, random effects models to analyse relative wage growth are estimated using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. It is found that overeducated workers in Germany have markedly lower relative wage growth rates than adequately educated workers. The results cast serious doubt on whether the career mobility model is able to explain overeducation in Germany. The plausibility of the results is supported by the finding that overeducated workers have less access to formal and informal on-the-job training, which is usually found to be positively correlated with wage growth even when controlling for selectivity effects (Pischke, Journal of Population Economics, 14, 523-48, 2001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of the paper are to examine the determinants of interregional labour migration for German regions using the data on gross flows of labour movements across regions. This is one of the few studies where data on labour migration is used. There also was a wage convergence after reunification between regions of East and West Germany and this to a certain extent provides an explanation for non-linear relationship between wage differences among regions and migration. As the study distinguishes the blue-collar and white-collar wage difference between regions, different relationships between migration and blue and white-collar workers' wage differences can be assessed. We also test the hypothesis whether highly skilled workers migrate to the regions where inequality is greater while less skilled workers tend to migrate to the regions where inequality is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates sector-specific driving forces for the standardization activities at national standardization organizations. In the first part, theoretical hypotheses concerning sector-specific standardization are derived. The empirical test is performed by a two-step procedure. First, based on 19 sectors, these hypotheses are tested empirically for Germany. The results show that R&D-intensive sectors standardize very actively; additionally, intellectual property rights play an important role. Furthermore, standardization increases with the concentration of the enterprises up to a certain threshold, where standardization activities decline again. Finally, export-intensive sectors tend to standardize more. Secondly, because of the small data base, these hypotheses are empirically tested in a pool model, an international cross-section approach based on 20 sectors and seven countries. These results are generally in concordance with the findings of Germany. After a summary of the results, recommendations for future standardization practice are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to empirically identify factors that influence the probability of being a fast-growing firm in Eastern and Western Germany. Descriptive analyses have shown that most firms experience only small positive or negative employment growth or stagnate over time. The job generation mechanism rests with a handful of firms that increase their employment significantly over time. The empirical analysis shows that the probability of being a fast-growing firm depends on different factors when separating Eastern and Western Germany as well as using different definitions of fast-growing firms. Moreover, the analysis shows that technology-intensive manufacturing branches and knowledge-based business-related services do not generate the majority of fast-growing firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between size and growth for a sample of banks from France, Germany, Italy and the UK over the period 1990 to 1996. Using several measures of bank size (total assets, equity and value of off balance sheet business), we test for size effects on growth, using models which incorporate the influences of previous growth, bank type and country of origin. The results of the analysis suggest that for Italy, small banks tend to grow faster than larger banks. No relationship is found between bank size and growth for France, Germany and the UK. This suggests a process of increasing concentration in these banking systems, even in the absence of bank specific strategic advantages. Small banks tend to have more variable growth rates than their larger counterparts. This suggests that large banks may enjoy advantages associated with diversified operations, which make them less susceptible to periods of extremely high or low growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper appraises the in-sample and out-of-sample adequacy of linear AR and nonlinear SETAR models of unemployment rates for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US. Tests are reported for the presence and specification of threshold nonlinearities, SETAR model estimates, limiting dynamic properties and residual diagnostics, and out-of-sample forecasting performance. In-sample, threshold non-linearities are confirmed to be strongly present for the UK, US and Germany, and more marginally so for Japan. Out-of-sample, excepting Japan, SETAR models provide superior onestep-ahead forecast on RMSE grounds, most notably for the US. Final tests indicate that these models exhibit predictive accuracy in the sense of parameter and residual variance stability, implying the potential for exploitation of such nonlinearity in official forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new German minimum wage applies a specific exemption clause for internships, where internships that last up to three months are exempted while internships that exceed three months are due to the minimum wage. Negative minimum wage effects on internships are heavily debated as internships are mostly non-productive. Difference-in-difference analyses that exploit establishment and regional variation in the bite of the minimum wage do not show a reduction in the number of internships. In addition, we pursue an innovative approach by using Google search data to analyse how the search intensity for internships changed in course of the minimum wage introduction. Difference-in-difference comparisons with other countries in Europe do not reveal an effect on the search for internship positions in general, but we observe a significant reduction in Google search for 'generation internship'. This suggests that the underlying societal phenomenon of a generation entering internships without a perspective for regular jobs has lost in relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examines the sources of fluctuations in hours worked in Canada, Germany, Japan and the U.S. It is particularly motivated by Galí's (1999) VAR study, which demonstrates that a positive technology shock reduces hours worked, at least in the short run. However, in the present study, a technology shock is identified without recourse to Galí's long-run restriction, which has been subject to active controversy. Furthermore, this study uncovers other important sources of fluctuations in hours worked to reflect the concern, raised by numerous studies, that technology shocks leave most variations in hours worked unexplained. Specifically, there are six shocks underlying our model, and they are identified using a set of sign restrictions. The empirical results confirm that in all four countries, a positive technology shock significantly reduces hours worked. This technology shock, along with labor supply and demand shocks, accounts for most of the short-term variations in hours worked. As the forecasting horizon increases, technology and demand shocks become less important, whereas labor supply shocks contribute to explaining the bulk of long-run variations in hours worked. Finally, the empirical relevance of Galí's longrun identification restriction is tested and the results are related to those obtained using the sign restriction model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We contribute to the debate on high-powered versus low-powered incentives in regulation by studying their heterogeneous impacts on different subpopulations, using data from the introduction of a high-powered prospective payment system (PPS) for hospital reimbursement in Germany. While no overall effect on quality or cost saving is found, our results support hypotheses drawn from an incentive and selection perspective: PPS reduces the length of stay of older relative to younger patients, of more severe relative to less severe cases, and in smaller relative to larger hospitals. Hospitals which adopted PPS earlier provide higher quality under PPS as proxied by the case-specific readmission rate. Our study also contributes to the health economic literature on hospital reimbursement as our data permits us to identify the treatment effect via different timings of adoption of PPS and to use a mo [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is often proposed as a politically feasible way by which rural municipalities can cope with intensified interregional competition and demographic change. We provide first evidence on citizens' support for IMC using survey data from rural Germany. We find little evidence that citizens are more willing to support IMC in munici-palities that can - by the logic of economic theory - expect higher net benefits from IMC. Citizens' support for IMC is primarily shaped by individual-level factors like the level of education, trust in local politicians and the degree of emotional attachment to the home mu-nicipality. Citizens' beliefs regarding the economic and political consequences of IMC are found to have the largest marginal effect by far. Regressions predicting interpersonal differ-ences in these beliefs show that these beliefs have to be considered independent drivers of policy preferences. This result suggests that more research is needed to better understand the factors shaping citizens' understanding of how economic policy works. This lack of under-standing applies to virtually all fields of economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after a fall-back linked to recent financial crises, private equity investing has been undergoing a strong revival, especially in Germany. In a country known for the large number of small- and medium-sized companies, private equity investors can profit from a large choice of potential targets. Researchers have been broadly studying the field of private equity for many years, especially exploring post-investment value creation. But most articles missed to address the importance of pre-acquisition determinants such as target characteristics. Under these circumstances, this study focuses on exploring the relationship between pre-acquisition target characteristics and deal performance by analysing a sample of 125 transactions in Germany using an ordinal logistic regression analysis. The findings suggest that asset lightness, management experience and the healthcare industry are positively linked to the deal success by increasing the likelihood of achieving a higher return category. This implies that private equity investors active in Germany could outperform if they set according to investment preferences. Similarly, investors are likely to get a higher return from general partners who invest in companies presenting such characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that potential inefficiencies on betting markets are more likely to exist at the very beginning of a season, when the available information on the teams’ playing strength is difficult to evaluate. This lack of reliable information should be particularly large in the case of recently promoted teams that have typically undergone major changes in the composition of their roster following their promotion. Without any information on the latter teams’ potential performance, they are particularly difficult to evaluate, which may eventually lead to inefficiencies and positive returns on investment in the betting market. We analyse odds from German first division Bundesliga soccer for the seasons from 2002/03 to 2015/16 to find betting market inefficiencies at the start of the season. As expected, betting on recently promoted team wins generates temporarily positive returns, especially for away games. These results suggest bookmakers to underestimate promoted teams’ ability to familiarize with the conditions in the new league, such as having to play in front of larger, often hostile crowds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I analyse the role of ethnic and native human capital – defined, respectively, as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups and of natives within a specific region – and of ethnic concentrations in the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in Germany. Compared to natives’ children, parents’ education has a small and insignificant effect on second-generation immigrants’ education. Ethnic concentrations have a negative effect, while ethnic capital is insignificant. The effect of native capital, too, is insignificant but much larger in magnitude than the effect of ethnic capital. For women, mother’s education is relatively more important. For men, ethnic concentrations constitute a stronger impediment to educational attainment than for women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The introduction of an European common market for electricity and the opening of the power markets to eastern Europe and Scandinavia will have a drastic and lasting effect on the structure of the German electricity industry. This paper presents an evaluation of the possible effects of a single market especially on the power trade within Europe and the German power plant system. One special aspect is the investigation, whether a flooding of the German electricity market with French nuclear power could happen. Scenario simulations reject the argumentation that a European common market for electricity would lead to a dramatic increase in international electricity trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports results of an empirical study on the effectiveness of labour market policy. Data from Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and the United States are used to apply a simultaneous equation model with wages and employment being the endogenous variables. In order to explain employment, the amount of unemployment benefits per unemployed (passive labour market policy) and payment for wage subsidies and training per employed and unemployed person (active labour market policy) are used in addition to real wages and output. Wages and output have their expected impact on total employment. It turns out that passive labour market policy has a negative, and active labour market measures a positive, effect on the number of persons employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of government spending on real and nominal exchange rates within the context of an open economy equilibrium rational expectations model. The model predicts that both real and nominal exchange rates appreciate in response to anticipated and unanticipated increases in government spending. Empirical evidence from Germany for the period 1975:2-1989:4 provides some weak support for the predictions of the model.
The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the role of fiscal policy in the determination of exchange rates by investigating the effects of government spending on real and nominal exchange rates. For this purpose, McCallum and Whitaker (1979) is extended to an open economy setting where the home country is assumed to produce and consume a single traded commodity and considered to be a price taker in the world commodity and capital markets. Within this framework it is shown that both anticipated and unanticipated increases in government spending lead to an appreciation of real and nominal exchange rates. Empirical evidence from Germany for the period 1975:2-1989:4 provides some support for the predictions of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the dominant economic themes of the 1980s was the USA's persistent current account deficit. This deficit had, of course, its counterpart in a capital account surplus -borrowing from the rest of the world. Observers, whether academic economists, market operators or press commentators, repeatedly questioned whether the situation could continue. Would world investors (in the financial sense) grow weary, or at least wary, of putting their funds into US securities, with the result that the dollar would collapse in the foreign exchange markets and/or US interest rates would have to rise to exorbitant levels to persuade the world to keep buying US paper?
The current account deficits have continued but by the time of writing, at least, the catastrophe has not happened. The dollar has moved down at times but also up at times, so that exchange rates against other currencies cannot be said to have collapsed. Interest rates, meanwhile, do not show a risk premium which is visible, as it were, to the naked eye.
However, that is not necessarily to say that no risk premium exists. This paper reports an attempt to determine whether there is such a risk premium on US hands and also for the sake of comparison, on those of the UK, France and Germany (Federal Republic). For reasons which will be made clear below, we concentrate on long-term bonds.
The results suggest that, a risk premium related to current account deficits exists for the USA, but there appears to be no evidence of a risk premium for the other countries. A suggestion is offered as to why this may be so.
The results can be seen in terms of the ultra-familiar, textbook IS-LM-BP model. The implication of a risk premium on current account deficits is that the BP curve is upward-sloping. In the absence of such a premium, it is flat.
The paper is organized as follows: Section II summarizes the development of the relevant theory; Section III explains the method of investigation and... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation of output to workers and hours is a frequently investigated topic. The points addressed are the development of wages over the business cycle or the adjustment of the workweek and employment if output is fluctuating. Some papers concerned with wages take supply factors into account,[1] whereas other authors only consider the demand for labour.[2] This paper is of the second kind, disregarding labour supply or wage effects it is only looking at the effects of current or expected production and orders regarding the adjustment of labour.
In this paper the question of how expected output determines the demand for hours of work and employment is investigated more closely. An adjustment model for employment and hours per worker is discussed. This model leads to conclusions which modify the hypotheses of Topel (1982) and Rossana (1985). One feature of this model is the consideration of adjustment costs of recruitment and overtime premiums. The costs associated with the worker are not constant over time. Usually in the beginning of an employment relationship fixed costs arise. These fixed costs are caused by training expenditures and foregone output in the period when workers are settling into their new jobs. Other fixed costs are expenditures for search and screening by the employer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of German foreign aid to, and net trade with, Namibia on Namibia's recent (1985-95) economic performance. The analysis suggests significant benefits for Namibia from trade with and assistance from Germany. However, domestic capital is found to determine Namibian economic growth more than net trade with Germany and German foreign aid to Namibia, while the effect of German capital tends be larger than that of German aid. A need for direct foreign investment from Germany to Namibia is inferred. Two types of further investigations are required: a joint determination of economic growth, aid, trade and capital formation, and a disaggregation of German aid to Namibia with an analysis of its individual impacts compared with similar effects of aid from other donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the determinants of disability retirement and unemployment of older workers, two labor market phenomena which the German public discussion combines under the label of early retirement. A social policy issue attracting much attention in German public debate is the reform of the retirement system. This reform is required because the current utilization of early retirement will not be affordable in future years. Both disability retirement and early retirement after unemployment are very common among older workers in Germany. During the 1980s more than half of all new retirees were disability retirees. The article shows the fractions of male cohorts that were either employed, unemployed or already in disability retirement by 1991. Out of all men aged 58 in 1991 about 18.3% had already retired due to disability and about 7% were unemployed. The public discussion indiscriminately combines disability retirement and `early retirement after long-term unemployment under the label of early retirement. Additionally, the high correlation between the two forms of labor force exit is confirmed by social scientists. This study tests the hypothesis that disability retirement and retirement after unemployment are substitute mechanisms for older workers to exit the labor force before reaching retirement age and compares the determinants of transitions into the two states.