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Im Rahmen der vom Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (BMFSFJ) und vom Bundesministerium der Finanzen (BMF) in Auftrag gegebenen Gesamtevaluation von zentralen ehe- und familienbezogenen Leistungen wurden in der vorliegenden Studie die Auswirkungen öffentlich geförderter Kinderbetreuung auf Familien untersucht. In einer ex-post Analyse wurden die Effekte von Kinderbetreuung auf folgende familienpolitische Ziele identifiziert: Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf/wirtschaftliche Stabilität und soziale Teilhabe von Familien, Steigerung der Geburtenrate/Realisierung von Kinderwünschen. Die Wirkungsanalysen wurden für Familien mit unter-dreijährigen Kindern (U3), mit drei- bis sechsjährigen Kindern (Ü3) sowie für Schulkinder (Ü6) separat durchgeführt. Im Anschluss wurden in Effizienzanalysen die Selbstfinanzierungsquoten des Ausbaus der Kindertagesbetreuung untersucht.

This paper investigates the impact of occasional grandchild care on grandparent healthusing the pan-European dataset SHARE on elderly people. We find a small but statisticallysignificant positive correlation between grandchild care and physical health, cognitivefunctioning and mental health. These relationships are robust to controlling for sociodemographiccharacteristics, social engagement, and intergenerational support. Usingpropensity score matching, we can show that the findings are also robust to the underlyingfunctional form. To see whether they can be interpreted as causal, we exploit the panelcharacter of the data and use an instrumental variable approach. Applying these methods,the effects seem to be smaller than the OLS correlations suggested.

This dissertation consists of five distinct empirical papers covering two large areas of research that are rather independent from each other: the economics of ageing and the economics of innovation. The first three chapters cover the impact of intergeneration interaction on the parents of adult children. Chapter 1 explores the effects of grandchild care on grandparent labour supply. Chapter 2 on the other hand investigates the impact of grandchild care on grandparent health. Chapter 3 analyses the effect of a divorce of an adult child on the parent. The final two chapters take another direction. They evaluate the effects of research and development (R&D) promoting subsidy schemes. Chapter 4 looks at two regionally focused subsidies in the German biotech sector, while Chapter 5 investigates the effect of R&D subsidies from multiple national and international sources on small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Thuringia.

This paper evaluates the R&D enhancing effects of two large public grant schemes for the German biotechnology industry (BioRegio, BioProfile). Both grant schemes are organized in the form of contents for cooperation with the goal to foster the performance of innovative firms by their organization in research clusters. We apply a Differencein Differences estimation technique in a generalized linear model framework, which allows us to control for different initial regional conditions in R&D activity of the biotech sector. Our econometric findings support the view that winners generally outperform non-winning participants during the treatment period, thus indicating that exclusive funding as well as the stimulating effect of being a 'winner' have positive eff ects on R&D activity in the short-term. Apart from this direct winner effect, for the non-winning participants no beneficial indirect effect due to a mobilization of local actors during the application phase could be detected. Finally, first attempts in estimating the long-term effects of the contests for cooperation approach on the winner regions'R&D activity in the post-treatment period show ambiguous results. Diese Arbeit analysiert die regionalen Fördereffekte des BioRegio- und BioProfile-Wettbewerbs für die deutsche Biotechnologie bezogen auf private FuE-Tätigkeit. Beide Förderprogramme zeichnen sich durch einen expliziten Wettbewerbscharakter aus und verfolgen das Ziel, die Leistungsfähigkeit von innovativen Unternehmen der Biotechnologie durch ihre Organisation und Zusammenarbeit in regionalen Clustern zu erhöhen. Für die empirische Analyse verwenden wir einen Differenz-in-Differenzen-Schätzansatz im Rahmen eines generalisierten linearen Modells, welcher es uns ermöglicht, für unterschiedliche regionale Ausgangsbedingungen und gemeinsame sektorale Zeittrends in der Biotechnologie zu kontrollieren. Unsere empirischen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Gewinnerregionen während der Förderung sowohl input- als auch outputseitig gemessen eine überproportional höhere FuE- und Innovationsaktivität aufweisen als erfolglose Teilnehmer- und nicht-teilnehmende Regionen. Der mit den Wettbewerben einhergehende privilegierte Zugang zu Fördermitteln und der zusätzliche Prestigegewinn zeigen somit positive Effekte in der kurzen Frist. Demgegenüber kann für erfolglose Teilnehmer in den Wettbewerben kein indirekter Effekt der Förderung gegenüber Nicht-Teilnehmern in der Form festgestellt werden, dass eine zusätzliche Mobilisierung der regionalen Akteure im Rahmen der Wettbewerbsteilnahme stattfindet. Ebenfalls hinterlässt eine erste Analyse der Langfristwirkungen in den Gewinnerregionen nach der Förderperiode einen eher gemischten Gesamteindruck.

In this paper, we evaluate the R&D enhancing effects of two large public grant schemes aiming at encouraging the performance of firms organized in clusters. These are Germany's well known BioRegio and BioProfile contests for which we compare the research performance of winning regions in contrast with non-winning and non-participating comparison regions. We apply Difference-in-Difference estimation techniques in a generalized linear model framework, which allows to control for different initial regional conditions in the biotechnology related R&D activity. Our econometric findings support the view that winners generally outperform non-winning participants during the treatment period, thus indicating that exclusive funding as well as the stimulating effect of being a “winner" seems to work in the short-term. In contrast, no indirect impacts stemming from a potential mobilizing effect of the contest approaches have been detected. Also, we find only limited evidence for long-term effects of public R&D grants in the post-treatment period. The results of our analysis remain stable if we additionally augment the model to account for the particular role of spatial dependence in the R&D outcome variables.

This paper analyses the impact of public subsidies on private sector research and development (R&D) activity for East German firms. Using propensity score matching, our empirical results indicate that subsidized firms indeed show a higher level of R&D intensity and a higher probability for patent application compared to non-subsidized firms for our sample year 2003. On average we find an increase in the R&D intensity of about 3.7 percentage points relative to non-subsidized firms. The probability for patent applications rises by 21 percentage points. These results closely match earlier empirical results for East Germany. Given the fact that the East German innovation system is particularly driven by small and medium sized enterprises (SME), we put a special focus on the effectiveness of the R&D subsidies for this latter subgroup. Here no previous empirical evidence is available so far. Our findings indicate that policy effectiveness also holds for private R&D activity of SMEs, where the highest increase in terms of R&D intensity is estimated for micro businesses with up to 10 employees.

This paper assess the empirical validity of the neoclassical migration model to predict German internal migration flows driven by regional labour market disparities. We estimate static and dynamic migration functions for 97 Spatial Planning Regions between 1996--2006 using key labour market signals including income and unemployment differences among a broader set of explanatory variables. Beside an aggregate specification we also estimate the model for age-group related subsamples. Our results give empirical support for the main transmission channels identified by the neoclassical framework: That is, regional differences in the real income show the expected effect on the net inmigration rate, while the link between regional unemployment rate differentials and net inmigration is negative. The results remains stable if further variables are added to the model. Net in-commuting shows a negative correlation with in-migration underlying the substitutive nature of the two variables. Moreover an increasing level of international competitiveness attracts further in-migration flows. We also find heterogeneity for different types of settlement structure and the East-West macro regions by including federal state level fixed effects or an East German dummy. The results broadly hold for age-group specific estimates. Here, the impact of labour market signals is tested to be of greatest magnitude for workforce relevant age-groups and especially young cohorts from 18 to 25 and 25 to 30 years. This latter result underlines the prominent role played by labour market conditions in determining internal migration rates of the working population in Germany.

This paper tests the empirical validity of the neoclassical migration model in predicting German internal migration flows. We estimate static and dynamic migration functions for 97 Spatial Planning Regions between 1996 and 2006 using key labor market signals including income and unemployment differences among a broader set of explanatory variables. Besides an aggregate specification we also estimate the model for agegroup related subsamples. Our results give empirical support for the main transmission channels identified by the neoclassical framework - both at the aggregate level as well as for age-group specific estimates. Thereby, the impact of labor market signals is tested to be of greatest magnitude for workforce relevant age-groups and especially young cohorts between 18 to 25 and 25 to 30 years. This latter result underlines the prominent role played by labor market conditions in determining internal migration rates of the working population in Germany. Dieses Papier untersucht die empirische Validität des neoklassischen Migrationsmodells zur Erklärung interner Migrationsströme in Deutschland. Die Schätzungen basieren auf Daten für 97 Raumordnungsregionen im Zeitraum 1996 bis 2006. Neben einer aggregierten Migrationsgleichung werden auch disaggregierte Modelle für verschiedene Altersgruppen geschätzt. Sowohl die aggregierten als auch altersgruppenspezifischen Resultate bestätigen den durch das neoklassische Migrationsmodell vorhergesagten Zusammenhang zwischen interner Migration und regionalen Arbeitsmarktungleichgewichten. Dabei zeigen die Ergebnisse, dass insbesondere junge Alterskohorten zwischen 18 und 25 sowie 25 und 30 Jahren stark auf Unterschiede im regionalen Lohnniveau und der Arbeitslosenquote reagieren.

We analyse the effect of public Research and Development (R&D) subsidies on private sector innovativeness for a cross-section of East German firms applying different matching estimations, which are primary based on an estimate of a propensity score. To do so, we use a until now unexplored representative database for the federal state of Thuringia covering around 1500 firm and the period 2001 to 2003. From a methodological perspective we apply a two-step microeconometric policy evaluation approach that estimates a probit equation for R&D programme participation in a first step and then uses the fitted values (the so called propensity score) in a second step matching approach. Here we compare the outcome difference of subsidized and non-subsidized firms for a broad set of private sector R&D variables such as general patenting activity, total number of patents, R&D expenditure and employment as well as R&D intensity (defined as R&D expenditures relative to total turnover). Our empirical results indicate that the treated firms indeed show a significantly higher research activity measured in terms of R&D intensity and patent application. With respect to R&D intensity for instance this difference is estimated to vary between 4 to 5 percentage points. Our findings thus give support to earlier evidence for East Germany, which so far have been solely based on the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) as the only database accessible for analyses on the role of public policy in the innovation process of German firms. Our empirical results for Thuringia pass a variety of robustness checks based on different estimation routines (Kernel, Mahalanobis distance) and additional matching criteria beyond the propensity score (such as same industry code as well as size group). We also perform sensitivity checks for subgroups of the sample, e.g. we include only those firms who regularly engage in R&D activity. All results hint at the positive stimulus given by public R&D subsidies to enhance the private sector innovativeness.