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Labor income serves as the primary income source for most households in OECD countries, underscoring the importance of one's performance in the labor market. Unemployment, therefore, carries substantial costs for individuals and significantly influences their life satisfaction. Beyond its personal toll, unemployment also bears macroeconomic implications, as high levels of unemployment indicate underutilized resources and economic slack. Thus, labor market statistics serve as crucial indicators of a society's economic health. Consequently, comprehending labor market dynamics is essential for understanding societies. In this thesis, I leverage German labor market data to explore the influence of institutions, firm wage policies, and working time on employees' labor market prospects. Each chapter presents empirical analyses grounded in theory, employing micro-econometric methods. Chapter 2, in collaboration with Rebekka Müller-Rehm, investigates the cyclicality of involuntary part-time employment in a labor market characterized by strict worker protection, an aspect previously unexplored. Chapter 3, in collaboration with Christian Bredemeier, offers new insights into the causes of the negative correlation between part-time experience and career development by examining the effects of working part-time versus involuntary part-time on labor market outcomes. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary part-time work helps to assess the relative importance of signaling and dynamic self-selection versus human-capital loss as mechanisms behind the career costs of part-time. Chapter 4 studies the implications of firm pay heterogeneity for on-the-job training by drawing on strategic wage posting models to derive empirical hypotheses and utilizing high-quality datasets to test them.

Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, the authors propose the Communication Business Model (CBM) as a new management approach for corporate communications. To this end, pertinent definitions, frameworks and typologies of business models are analyzed and combined with insights from corporate communications literature. The CBM outlines the generic architecture of business models for communication departments. Such models describe the basic principle of how such a unit operates, what services and products it provides, how it creates value for an organization and what revenues and resources are allocated. Relevance: The question of whether and how communication departments contribute to organizational value creation has rarely been addressed in research. Such evidence is crucial, however, as communications competes internally with other functions (e.g. marketing and human resources) for budgets and staff. This article fills the gap by applying the business model concept, an established approach from management theory and practice, to communication units. Practical implications: The CBM can be used as a management tool to analyze, explain and innovate communication management in organizations. It is a fertile approach for communication practitioners to make the work of their department visible and to position themselves internally and externally.

In this thesis, four papers are presented that deal with incentives and consumer response in the context of the transformation of the energy system. Chapter 2 deals with environmental policy instruments for investments in durable goods, assuming the existence of a zero emission backstop technology and that consumers are present biased. If the social costs of carbon and the CO2 price are sufficiently high, one can address present bias with a single instrument. While the level of this single instrument depends on the level of present bias, the chapter finds that there exists a tax-subsidy combination that is optimal regardless of the level of present bias. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 provide empirical insights into real-world consumer response to price signals. In Chapter 3, the impact of regionally differing electricity prices on PV investments under net purchasing is investigated. The results show that network tariffs do impact PV adoption. The effect has increased in recent years when self-consumption has become financially more attractive, and the results confirm that PV investments are driven by the volumetric tariff. Chapter 4 analyzes the functional form and magnitude of short-term electricity demand response at the wholesale level. For low prices, the linear assumption tends to yield similar average elasticities to the constant elasticity obtained from the log-log specification. However, estimators based on linear functions exhibit significant variations depending on whether low or high prices are considered. In contrast, the log-log approach provides smaller differences between estimates based on low and high prices. Finally, Chapter 5 explores the implications of varying incentives in electric vehicle charging on regional residual load curves. The residual load curves change structurally as positive and negative peaks in residual demand increase over the years. Although the absolute flexibility potential of EV home charging increases with the number of vehicles

The dissertation presents four essays on carbon pricing instruments (CPI). Its leading questions are: Are the design options for CPIs that are currently discussed effective and efficient? How does the dynamic nature of emission trading drive its outcome compared to other CPIs? The research note in chapter 2 sets up an analytical model to investigate the effect of learning by doing on the intertemporal distribution of abatement efforts in an ETS. While learning by doing increases early abatement under a carbon tax, the effect is ambiguous under an emission trading system. If the regulator sets the emissions cap or tax level under uncertainty and learning by doing is stronger than expected, total costs are higher under a carbon tax than under an ETS. If learning by doing is weaker, a carbon tax performs better. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the 2018 reform and the 2021 reform proposal of the EU ETS. Chapter 3 develops a discrete time model of the intertemporal allowance market that accurately depicts the market stability reserve and the cancellation mechanism in the EU ETS. The model allows for a decomposition of the effects of the individual amendments and the evaluation of their cost effectiveness. Chapter 4 extends the model developed in chapter 3 to assess the impact of the 2021 reform proposal. The adjusted MSR regulation may increase resilience to shocks. Yet, it may also decrease MSR intake, reducing the MSR’s ability to regulate allowance supply. The fixed cancellation threshold is effective in increasing the predictability of the mechanism. Chapter 5 analyzes under which circumstances Carbon Contracts for Differences (CCfDs) are useful instruments to complement ETSs. An analytical model assesses the welfare effects of CCfDs comparing them to other carbon pricing regimes. The chapter finds CCfDs can be beneficial policy instruments, as they hedge firms’ risk, encouraging investments when firms’ risk aversion would otherwise inhibit them. However, as CCfDs hedge the

In a year marked by challenging market dynamics, the importance of ESG investments remains unwavering. But the wave of ESG regulations and requests generates a demand for more scalable ways to collect and analyze ESG data. The rise of AI could mark a turning point in an industry heavily burdened by reporting requirements, and unlock the true potential of ESG for businesses and investors alike.

Nowadays, firms lack information to derive the share of wallet, a vital metric that identifies how much additional spending a firm could capture from each customer. However, decoding Blockchain data enables observing all transactions of each wallet, respectively customer, on the Ethereum NFT market. To shed light on the share of wallet, we analyzed 22.7 million transactions from over 1.3 million customers across eight competing firms on the Ethereum NFT market.

This study explores high-frequency cross-asset lead-lag relationships for various market microstructure dimensions. Utilizing data from stocks, futures, and exchange traded products, the findings uncover significant lead-lag patterns, particularly among fundamentally related instruments. Our results demonstrate that knowledge about lead-lag relationships can be leveraged for forecasting short-term changes in financial markets.

Yes, they are. The securities services industry is at a tipping point of its digital transformation and will now see industry solutions to scale. We identify three fundamental drivers being adopted more broadly: cloud migration, data, and digitization. This triage also drives the scaling of Clearstream’s digital infrastructure D7, one of the leading digital infrastructures globally.

Inflation affects the real value of assets and liabilities. Among German households, this awareness of these effects seems incomplete, which can lead to poor financial decisions., Die Inflation wirkt sich auf Einkommen, Ersparnisse und auch die Schulden aus. In deutschen Haushalten scheinen diese Informationen nicht gleichermaßen verbreitet, was zu ungünstigen Finanzentscheidungen führen kann.

Die Inflation wirkt sich auf Einkommen, Ersparnisse und auch die Schulden aus. In deutschen Haushalten scheinen diese Informationen nicht gleichermaßen verbreitet, was zu ungünstigen Finanzentscheidungen führen kann., Inflation affects the real value of assets and liabilities. Among German households, this awareness of these effects seems incomplete, which can lead to poor financial decisions.

This dissertation mainly deals with the question of how social identities affects individual behavior in the domains of social status-seeking behavior, belief formation processes and migration preferences.

We analyze the effect of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on bilateral foreign portfolio investment in equity and debt securities. We find that expropriation risk and the level of a BIT’s investor protection are complementary. Applying a Poisson Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood model to a panel of 60 home and 39 host countries from 2002 to 2017, we find that host countries receive 40% more bilateral equity investment when they protect foreign investors with a BIT. This effect almost doubles when investment protection of BITs is strong, and the political risk of the host country is high.

Striving to mitigate climate change, the European Union has adopted net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as a target for 2050. In this paper, European chemical industry roadmaps from the past six years are assessed and compared to uncover how the industry envisions its role in the transition to net-zero emissions. The roadmaps are assessed in terms of ambition level, technology and feedstock strategies, investment needs and costs, agency and dependency on other actors, as well as timeline and concretion. Although net-zero pathways are often drawn out in the roadmaps, some also choose to emphasize and argue for less ambitious pathways with emission reductions of only 40-60 %. The roadmaps vary widely in terms of the importance they assign to mechanical and chemical recycling, switching to biogenic carbon and carbon dioxide as feedstock, electrification and hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage. A commonality though, is that low-tech or near-term mitigation pathways such as demand reduction, reuse or material efficiency are seldom included. High investment needs are generally highlighted, as well as the need for policy to create enabling conditions, whereas the agency and responsibility of the chemical industry itself is downplayed. Our analysis highlights that the chemical industry does not yet have a strong and shared vision for pathways to net-zero emissions. We conclude that such a future vision would benefit from taking a whole value chain approach including demand-side options and consideration of scope 3 emissions.

Was sind Diffusionsmodelle? Wie funktionieren sie? Können sie basierend auf Text Prompts Bilder generieren die zum Trainieren von Klassifizierungsalgorithmen genutzt werden? Dies sind die Hauptfragen, die ich in dieser Arbeit zu beantworten versuchen werde. Ich werde versuchen, verschiedene Bilder von statistischen Diagrammen, die aus der Open-Source-Bibliothek Wikimedia Commons stammen, zu klassfizieren. Insgesamt enthält diese Bibliothek fast 100 Millionen Medienelemente. Eine laissez - faire Politik bezüglich der Erstellung von Kategorien und dem Hochladen von Bildern, hat zu vielen unbeschrifteten oder falsch klassifizierten Bildern sowie zum Teil sehr kleinen Nischenklassen geführt. Ich werde diese Probleme angehen, indem ich Bildklassifizierungsalgorithmen auf bereinigten Datensätzen von Instanzen ausgewählter Kategorien trainiere. Ich werde daraufhin die Trainings- und Validierungssets mit variierend vielen generitren Bildern erweitern und untersuchen wie sich verschiedene Performanzmetriken in Abhängigkeit von der Anzahl bzw. dem Anteil der generierten Bilddaten verändern. Ich werde einige Ergebnisse präsentieren. Zwei Haupterkenntnisse sind, dass die generative Dateierweiterung sehr gut für konzeptionell unterschiedliche Kategorien funktioniert und bei ähnlicheren Klassen weniger gute Ergebnisse liefert., What are diffusion models? How do they work? Can they improve image classification algorithms? These are the main questions I will try to answer in this thesis. I will try to label different images of statistical charts that originate from the open-source library Wikimedia Commons. In total, this library contains almost 100 million media elements. A loose policy regarding the creation of categories and the uploading of images has led to a lot of unlabeled or falsely classified images. Another challenge when labeling the images on Wikimedia Commons is that some niche classes are very small. I will tackle these problems by training image classification algorithms on cleaned data sets of selected categories. I will enhance the training and validation sets with different amounts of artificial images. While there are many exciting results, the most important one is that generative data augmentation seems to work well for major categories but not that well for niche categories, which are similar conceptually.

Expanding on a general equilibrium model of offshoring, we analyze the effects of a unilateral emissions tax increase on the environment, income, and inequality. Heterogeneous firms allocate labor across production tasks and emissions abatement, while only the most productive can benefit from lower labor and/or emissions costs abroad and offshore. We find a non-monotonic effect on global emissions, which decline if the initial difference in emissions taxes is small. For a sufficiently large difference, global emissions rise, implying emissions leakage of more than 100%. The underlying driver is a global technique effect: While the emissions intensity of incumbent non-offshoring firms declines, the cleanest firms start offshoring. Moreover, offshoring firms become dirtier, induced by a reduction in the foreign effective emissions tax in general equilibrium. Implementing a BCA prevents emissions leakage, reduces income inequality in the reforming country, but raises inequality across countries.

This thesis includes three chapters that analyze causes and consequences of social cohesion on the national and global level.

This thesis presents four essays on market design and regulation in energy economics. The first essay analyses the spatial allocation of variable renewable electricity (VRE) capacity for the market designs nodal and uniform pricing using a highly stylised theoretical model. Under nodal pricing, three ranges of spatial allocation are identified. Depending on the range, marginal VRE capacity is either allocated to the node with the highest availability, split between the nodes, or fully allocated to the node with the lower average availability. Which of the ranges applies depends on system characteristics such as VRE penetration or transmission capacity. Under uniform pricing, it is found that too much capacity is allocated to the node with high availability when VRE penetration exceeds a certain threshold. The second essay assesses the welfare effects of Carbon Contracts for Differences (CCfDs). In the model, a regulator can offer CCfDs to risk-averse firms that decide upon irreversible investments in an emission-free technology in the presence of risk. Risk arises from environmental damage or from the variable costs of the emission-free technology. On the one hand, through their hedging effect, CCfDs motivate firms to invest more in low-emission technologies, thereby increasing welfare. On the other hand, hedging through CCfDs carries the risk of artificially keeping inefficient production processes in the market at a later stage, which reduces welfare. The third essay examines the effects of multipliers in the pricing of short-term gas transmission capacity, as is the case in the European Union (EU) gas transmission system. Using a stylised theoretical framework, the analysis shows that higher multipliers can lead to increased storage utilisation and more uniform use of transport capacity. Higher multipliers are also found to lead to higher total system costs and lower total welfare. Nevertheless, such higher multipliers might increase consumer surplus compared to

Die vorliegende Arbeit geht der Forschungsfrage nach: „Wie befördern Marketingmaßnahmen nachhaltigkeitsorientierte Bekleidungsunternehmen, dass Kund:innen sich selbstbegrenzen im Konsum?“, da der Konsum und seine Begrenzung zu den drängendsten Themen unserer Zeit gehören. Es wird untersucht, wie eine breite Verhaltensveränderung hin zu nachhaltigeren Konsummustern möglich ist und welche Verantwortung Unternehmen (dafür) haben. Anhand der Konzepte Ethischer Kompass, Drei-Ebenen-Paradigma abstrakter Ordnung und Marketingmix kann diese wirtschaftsethische Unternehmensverantwortung realwirtschaftlich umgesetzt werden. Auch Bekleidungskonsument:innen werden untersucht, was sie (normativ) wollen und welche Wirklichkeiten sie von ihren Zielen abhalten. Parallel werden die Erkenntnisse für Verhalten in drei ethisch gehaltvolle Klassen von Handlungsbedingungen eingeordnet, die Verhalten nachvollziehbar machen. Mittels einer Fallstudienanalyse kann dargestellt werden, dass das grundlegende Nichtschädigungsgebot nicht nur in Marketingmaßnahmen umgesetzt wird, sondern auch als Unternehmensziel definiert wird. Dies reicht jedoch noch nicht aus, dass sich Bekleidungskonsument:innen dauerhaft selbstbegrenzen können, obwohl sie es wollen.

At present, service-oriented organizations must confront growing challenges and competition due to the rapid pace of digital transformation and a shortage of skilled workers, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This publication-based dissertation project covers research on the antecedents of service innovation as dy-namic capabilities with the aim of enhancing competitive advantage, given the current business dynamics. The first section of this dissertation introduces service innovation as a dynamic capability, emphasizes the need for antecedents of service innovation, and summarizes the four research papers that make up this dis-sertation. The second section presents a qualitative research paper employing a grounded theory approach. Digital leadership-related capabilities are conceptualized and the impact on dynamic service innovation ca-pabilities in digital transformation contexts is derived using an inductive framework. The third section is a mixed-method research paper that qualitatively conceptualizes innovative new work practices in service or-ganizations and quantitatively assesses their effects on workplace attractiveness for employees. The fourth section presents a multi-method exploratory research paper that identifies digital leadership capabilities us-ing expert interviews and measures the influence of these capabilities on service innovation performance. The research paper in the fifth section uses a structural equation model as a methodological frame. It iden-tifies employee-perceived service innovations and validates customer expectations within the context of po-litical behavior. The sixth section concludes the dissertation project, summarizing the theoretical and prac-tical contribution, describing limitations, and outlining further ideas for research.

Mittel- und längerfristig können Bestand und Entwicklung eines Unternehmens nur gewährleistet werden, wenn das Unternehmen wirtschaftlich bzw. rentabel arbeitet und damit ein angemessener Deckungsbeitrag bzw. Betriebserfolg erwirtschaftet wird. Um einen angemessenen Deckungsbeitrag bzw. Gewinn zu erwirtschaften, sind einerseits die Prozesse zur Erstellung und Vermarktung der betrieblichen Leistungen im Unternehmen wirtschaftlich zu beherrschen, die Leistungen am Markt abzusetzen und für die abgesetzten Leistungen bestmögliche Erlöse zu erzielen, andererseits sind die durch die Bereitstellung und Nutzung der betrieblichen Ressourcen, Potentiale und Kapazitäten sowie die Erstellung und Vermarktung der betrieblichen Leistungen verursachten Kosten zu beherrschen und die verursachten Kosten über die Erlöse zu decken. Eine zeitgemäße Kosten- und Leistungsrechnung umfasst deshalb die Arbeitsbereiche Leistungs- und Erlösrechnung, Kostenrechnung sowie Deckungsbeitrags- und Betriebserfolgsrechnung. Gegenstand des vorliegenden Kurses 5 im Kursangebot Leistungs- und Erlös-, Kosten-, Deckungsbeitrags- sowie Betriebserfolgsrechnung ist der Arbeitsbereich der Kostenrechnung. Kurs 5 Kostenrechnung umfasst die Abschnitte - Grundlagen der Kostenrechnung, - Systeme der Kostenrechnung, - Kostenarten und Kostenartenrechnung, - Kostenstellen und Kostenstellenrechnung sowie - Kostenträger und Kostenträgerrechnung. Die Form von Selbstlern- bzw. Selbststudienkursen ermöglicht es, sich zeitlich flexibel mit dem Wissen zu Leistungs- und Erlös-, Kosten-, Deckungsbeitrags- sowie Betriebserfolgsrechnung zu beschäftigen. Der modulare Aufbau des Kursangebotes (als eine Reihe von Einzelkursen zu inhaltlichen Schwerpunkten) unterstützt die individuelle Auswahl und Gestaltung des Selbstlernens bzw. Selbststudiums. Der Aufbau des Kursangebotes in einzelnen Kursen überlässt die Reihenfolge der Bearbeitung weitgehend dem Leser.

Diese Dissertation behandelt die Erwerbstätigkeit von Müttern, Fertilität und die Entwicklung von Kindern in Deutschland. In Kapitel zwei evaluieren wir den Effekt der Elterngeldreform von 2007. Zunächst zeigen wir die „child penalty“, den Effekt der Mutterschaft auf die Erwerbstätigkeit. Wir verwenden dann die errechneten „child penalties“ vor und nach der Reform, um zu zeigen, dass die Reform positive Effekte auf die mittelfristige Erwerbstätigkeit hatte. Kapitel drei konzentriert sich auf die sogenannten „Cash-for-Care“-Transferleistungen für Eltern von ein- bis zweijährigen Kindern. Ich zeige eine signifikante Reduzierung der Beschäftigung bei Migrantinnen, wenn die potenziellen Leistungen erhöht werden. Es gibt positive Auswirkungen auf die Fertilität. Keine signifikanten Effekte finde ich für die Entwicklung der Kinder. In Kapitel vier untersuchen wir den Effekt der deutschen Ganztagsgrundschulen auf die Schulkinder. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen positive Auswirkungen auf die Schulleistungen. Wir stellen auch signifikante positive Peer-Effekte der Ganztagsprogramme fest. Allerdings finden wir nicht, dass diese Programme zur Verringerung der Ungleichheit im Schulsystem beitragen. Kapitel fünf behandelt die Untererfassung von Teilzeit in den administrativen Arbeitsmarktdaten, welche bis 2011 vorkam. Wir entwickeln eine Korrekturmethode für fehlerhalft als Vollzeit registrierte Teilzeitbeschäftigungsverhältnisse. Die Korrektur hat Auswirkungen auf die Entwicklung der Lohnungleichheit, aber auch die Müttererwerbstätigkeit. Zusammenfassend befasst sich meine Dissertation mit dem Zeitraum von der Geburt bis zur Grundschule und untersucht Effekte auf Mütter und Kinder. Darüber hinaus wird die fehlerhafte Erfassung von Teilzeitbeschäftigungen in den administrativen Arbeitsmarktdaten adressiert. Die Arbeit zielt darauf ab, wertvolle Erkenntnisse über die Auswirkungen von Transferleistungen und die Gestaltung von Grundschulprogrammen auf Familien in Deutschland zu liefern., This dissertation examines various aspects related to maternal employment, fertility and the skill development of children in Germany. In chapter two, we develop an estimation method for the causal effect of the 2007 parental benefits reform in Germany. Therefore, we first estimate the "child penalty'' on employment outcomes, then we use the estimated child penalties before and after reform implementation to assess reform effects. We find that the reform had positive effects on medium-run employment. Chapter three focuses on the so-called "cash-for-care''-transfers for parents of children aged one to two. I find a significant reduction of employment for migrant mothers if the potential benefit amount is increased. There are positive effects on fertility for the average of the population. However, I do not find significant effects on the skill development of children. In chapter four, we study the expansions of German all-day schools and their impact on children's outcomes. Our findings reveal evidence of positive impacts on children's achievements. We also show significant positive peer effects from classmates attending all-day programs. However, we do not find significant evidence that these programs significantly contribute to decreasing inequality in the German school system. Chapter five addresses an important aspect in the administrative labor market data. By developing a correction for misreported part-time employment spells which happened in the years prior 2011. The corrected data have implications for studying wage inequality, but also for studying maternal employment as the part-time share is very high among mothers of young children. In summary, this dissertation studies the period from birth to primary school. It covers topics such as maternal employment, fertility and skill development. Additionally, it addresses the data problem of misreported part-time spells in the administrative labor market data and presents a correction methodology.

Does political conflict with another country influence domestic consumers' daily consumption choices? We exploit the volatile US-China relations in 2018 and 2019 to analyze whether US consumers reduce their visits to Chinese restaurants when bilateral relations deteriorate. We measure the degree of political conflict through negativity in media reports and rely on smartphone location data to measure daily visits to over 190,000 US restaurants. A deterioration in US-China relations induces a significant decline in visits not only to Chinese but also to other foreign ethnic restaurants, while visits to typical American restaurants increase. We identify consumers' age, race, and cultural openness to moderate the strength of this ethnocentric effect.

Highlights • Six Newton methods for solving matrix quadratic equations in linear DSGE models. • Compared to QZ using 99 different DSGE models including Smets and Wouters (2007). • Newton methods more accurate than QZ with comparable computation burden. • Apt for refining solutions from alternative methods or nearby parameterizations. Abstract This paper presents and compares Newton-based methods from the applied mathematics literature for solving the matrix quadratic that underlies the recursive solution of linear DSGE models. The methods are compared using nearly 100 different models from the Macroeconomic Model Data Base (MMB) and different parameterizations of the monetary policy rule in the medium-scale New Keynesian model of Smets and Wouters (2007) iteratively. We find that Newton-based methods compare favorably in solving DSGE models, providing higher accuracy as measured by the forward error of the solution at a comparable computation burden. The methods, however, suffer from their inability to guarantee convergence to a particular, e.g. unique stable, solution, but their iterative procedures lend themselves to refining solutions either from different methods or parameterizations.

The schooling gap diminishes because the services sector becomes more pronounced for high-income countries, and the paid hours gap closes. Although gender wage inequality persists across country income groups, differences in schooling years between females and males diminish. We assemble a novel dataset, calibrate a general equilibrium, multi-sector, -gender, and -production technology model, and show that gender-specific sectoral comparative advantages explain the paid hours and schooling gap decline from low- to high-income economies even when the wage gap persists. Additionally, our counterfactual analyses indicate that consumption subsistence and production share heterogeneity across both income groups and genders are essential to explain the co-decline of the schooling and paid hours gaps. Our results highlight effective mechanisms for policies aiming to reduce gender inequality in schooling and suggest that the schooling gap decline and the de-invisibilization of female paid work observed in high-income countries are linked by structural sector movements instead of wage inequality reductions.

We study the many implications of the Eurosystem collateral framework for corporate bonds. Using data on the evolving collateral eligibility list, we identify the first inclusion dates of bonds and issuers and use these events to find that the increased supply and demand for pledgeable collateral following eligibility (a) increases activity in the corporate securities lending market, (b) lowers eligible bond yields, and (c) affects bond liquidity. Thus, corporate bond lending relaxes the constraint of limited collateral supply and thereby improves market functioning.

Highlights • Pathways for a circular economy towards the EU goals require policy support that, in turn, requires legitimacy. • Legitimacy is often contested in the public discourse at all phases in the technological innovation system. • Legitimacy remains poorly understood for ‘in-between’ technologies that struggle to move from the formative to the growth stage. • The article explores legitimacy for chemical recycling primarily based on evidence from the UK, Germany, and Italy. Abstract The European Commission aims to increase the recycling of plastic packaging to 60% by 2025, requiring fundamental changes towards a more circular economy. Pathways for this transition require policy support that largely depends on their legitimacy in the public discourse. These normative aspects remain poorly understood for ‘in-between’ technologies, i.e., technologies that are no longer novel but struggle to move to the growth phase within the technological innovation system. Therefore, we ask: How do discourses shape technology legitimacy for in-between technologies? Drawing on the empirical example of chemical recycling, the analysis renders two principal findings. First, legitimising and delegitimising storylines present contesting views on in-between technologies regarding their technological aspects, environmental and social impacts, and economic and policy implications. Second, how discourses contribute to technology legitimacy depends on the actors and interests that drive the prevalent storylines in particular contexts.

The 2011 Arab Spring marked the opening of the Central Mediterranean Route for irregular border crossings between Libya and Italy, which produced heterogeneous reductions of bilateral smuggling distances between country pairs in the Mediterranean region. We exploit this source of spatial and temporal variation in bilateral distance along land and sea routes to estimate the elasticity of irregular migration intentions for African and Near East countries. We estimate an elasticity of migration intentions to smuggling distances exceeding −3, mainly driven by countries with weak rule of law and high internet penetration. Our findings are consistent across irregular migration measures both at the aggregate and individual levels. We show that irregular migration elasticity is higher for youth, relatively skilled individuals and those with an informative advantage (having a social network abroad or a mobile phone).

In a unifying framework generalizing established theories we characterize under which conditions Joint Ownership of assets creates the best cooperation incentives in a partnership. We endogenise renegotiation costs and assume that they weakly increase with additional assets. A salient sufficient condition for optimal cooperation incentives among patient partners is if Joint Ownership is a Strict Coasian Institution for which transaction costs impede an efficient asset reallocation after a breakdown. In contrast to Halonen (2002) the logic behind our results is that Joint Ownership maximizes the value of the relationship and the costs of renegotiating ownership after a broken relationship.

This paper empirically analyses whether post-global financial crisis regulatory reforms have created appropriate incentives to voluntarily centrally clear over-the-counter (OTC) derivative contracts. We use confidential European trade repository data on single-name sovereign credit default swap (CDS) transactions and show that both seller and buyer manage counterparty exposures and capital costs, strategically choosing to clear when the counterparty is riskier. The clearing incentives seem particularly responsive to seller credit risk, which is in line with the notion that counterparty credit risk (CCR) is asymmetric in CDS contracts. The riskiness of the underlying reference entity also impacts the decision to clear as it affects both CCR capital charges for OTC contracts and central counterparty clearing house (CCP) margins for cleared contracts. Lastly, we find evidence that when a transaction helps netting positions with the CCP and hence lower margins, the likelihood of clearing is higher.

When estimating misspecified linear factor models for the cross-section of expected returns using GMM, the explanatory power of these models can be spuriously high when the estimated factor means are allowed to deviate substantially from the sample averages. In fact, by shifting the weights on the moment conditions, any level of cross-sectional fit can be attained. The mathematically correct global minimum of the GMM objective function can be obtained at a parameter vector that is far from the true parameters of the data-generating process. This property is not restricted to small samples, but rather holds in population. It is a feature of the GMM estimation design and applies to both strong and weak factors, as well as to all types of test assets.

The hierarchical feature regression (HFR) is a novel graph-based regularized regression estimator, which mobilizes insights from the domains of machine learning and graph theory to estimate robust parameters for a linear regression. The estimator constructs a supervised feature graph that decomposes parameters along its edges, adjusting first for common variation and successively incorporating idiosyncratic patterns into the fitting process. The graph structure has the effect of shrinking parameters towards group targets, where the extent of shrinkage is governed by a hyperparameter, and group compositions as well as shrinkage targets are determined endogenously. The method offers rich resources for the visual exploration of the latent effect structure in the data, and demonstrates good predictive accuracy and versatility when compared to a panel of commonly used regularization techniques across a range of empirical and simulated regression tasks.

Die vorliegende Dissertation bietet eine eingehende Analyse der Entstehung und Evolution der rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen der Arbeitnehmerüberlassung in der Volksrepublik China. Ursprünglich in den 1980er Jahren als Instrument zur Reduzierung der Arbeitslosigkeit eingeführt, hat sich die Funktion der Arbeitnehmerüberlassung im Laufe der Zeit gewandelt. Diese Entwicklung wird in der Arbeit sorgfältig nachgezeichnet. Die Studie skizziert die legislative Entwicklung von der anfänglichen Konzeption bis zur formellen Legalisierung im Jahr 2007 und untersucht die geltenden gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zur Arbeitnehmerüberlassung. Dabei werden die spezifischen Aspekte der chinesischen Gesetzgebung herausgestellt, bei der die Arbeitnehmerüberlassung vornehmlich als komplementäre Beschäftigungsform angesehen wird. Die Arbeit beleuchtet die Rechte und Pflichten aller Akteure. Obwohl nicht umfassend rechtsvergleichend angelegt, wird doch immer wieder ein Blick auf die Rechtslage in Deutschland geworfen, sodass die unterschiedlichen regulatorischen Ansätze deutlich hervortreten. Zugleich werden die besonderen Herausforderungen behandelt, denen diese Beschäftigungsform im chinesischen Kontext begegnet.

This dissertation comprises three chapters on various topics related to taxation. Chapter one explores financial crises and their relationship to belief heterogeneity. A model with a collateral constraint dependent on an asset’s price is developed. Agents differ in their beliefs about the asset’s future payoff. It is shown that the probability and the extent of financial distress increase with the heterogeneity of agents' beliefs. Furthermore, this framework allows for the measurement of type-dependent contributions to financial distress and the calculation of optimal corrective taxation. Chapter two examines Prussian income tax reforms and the evolution towards modern comprehensive income taxation. In the early nineteenth century, Prussia introduced a tax based on social classes. From a modern tax theory perspective, this tax can achieve distributive objectives without sacrificing first-best efficiency. However, Prussia gradually abolished class-based taxation through a series of reforms. Using a Mirrleesian income tax model, it is shown that these reforms increased potential tax revenue in a politically feasible way. Historical data confirm the theoretical results. Chapter three addresses the issue of fiscal decentralization. The literature provides evidence that a decentralized system decreases justification of evading taxes. This so-called tax morale is correlated with actual tax evasion and therefore a variable of interest. Other studies suggest that national identity also impacts tax morale. An empirical cross-country analysis reveals a positive effect of decentralization and local, regional, and national identity on tax morale. A calibrated model suggests that a decentralized system is preferable for Germany.

We assess how sustainable finance literacy affects people’s sustainable investment behavior, using a pre-registered experiment. We find that an increase in sustainable finance literacy leads to a 4 to 5% increase in the probability of investing sustainably. This effect is moderated by sustainability preferences. In the absence of moderate sustainability preferences, any additional increase in sustainable finance literacy is at minimum irrelevant, and we find some evidence that it might even reduce sustainable investments. Our findings underscore the role of knowledge in shaping sustainable investment decisions, highlighting the importance of factors beyond sustainability preferences.

The Federal Reserve has been publishing federal funds rate prescriptions from Taylor rules in its Monetary Policy Report since 2017. The signals from the rules aligned with Fed action on many occasions, but in some cases the Fed opted for a different route. This paper reviews the implications of the rules during the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent inflation surge and derives projections for the future. In 2020, the Fed took the negative prescribed rates, which were far below the effective lower bound on the nominal interest rate, as support for extensive and long-lasting quantitative easing. Yet, the calculations overstate the extent of the constraint, because they neglect the supply side effects of the pandemic. The paper proposes a simple model-based adjustment to the resource gap used by the rules for 2020. In 2021, the rules clearly signaled the need for tightening because of the rise of inflation, yet the Fed waited until spring 2022 to raise the federal funds rate. With the decline of inflation over the course of 2023, the rules’ prescriptions have also come down. They fall below the actual federal funds rate target range in 2024. Several caveats concerning the projections of the interest rate prescriptions are discussed.