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DIW Discussion Papers 605 / 2006
Top-down computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are used extensively for analysis of energy and climate policies. Energy-intensive industries are usually represented in top-down economic models as abstract economic production functions, of the constantelasticity-of-substitution (CES) functional form. This study explores methods for improving the realism of energy-intensive industries in top-down ...
2006| Katja Schumacher, Ronald D. Sands
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DIW Discussion Papers 604 / 2006
We investigate in a horizontal product differentiation model with North-South trade the implications of a home bias in consumers' demand for labelled goods. We compare mutual recognition and international harmonisation of ecological labels with respect to firms' profits and welfare. Northern consumers perceive a warm glow from buying green, but have information problems with imported labelled products. ...
2006| Wilhelm Althammer, Susanne Dröge
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DIW Discussion Papers 603 / 2006
In diesem Beitrag wird auf der Basis von Paneldaten für die westdeutschen Bundesländer untersucht, ob und in welchem Maße der demographische Wandel sowie die unterschiedlichen politischen Parteienkonstellationen die Hochschulausgaben auf Länderebene beeinflussen. Wir finden empirische Evidenz für die Hypothese, dass die Hochschulausgaben negativ von der Bevölkerungsalterung abhängen, allerdings hängt ...
2006| Ulrich Oberndorfer, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 602 / 2006
In contrast to other countries where official odometer readings are collected when cars are being inspected or whenever there is a change in the registration data, no such information is available in Germany. The published annual figures on mileage of German vehicles result from model calculations, based on different data sources. The last two large surveys on car use were carried out in 1993 and 2002. ...
2006| Dominika Kalinowska, Hartmut Kuhfeld
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DIW Discussion Papers 601 / 2006
The enlargement of the European Union in May 2004 by ten new member states bear increasing challenges in creating social cohesion among its citizens and regions. Social cohesion is understood here in a broad sense as a coalescence of European societies in such a way that living conditions and quality of life of its citizens converge. This paper's empirical focus is on the two core life domains that ...
2006| Wolfgang Keck, Peter Krause
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DIW Discussion Papers 600 / 2006
The influence of risk aversion on the decision to become self-employed is a much discussed topic in the entrepreneurial literature. Conventional wisdom asserts that the role model of an entrepreneur requires to make risky decisions in uncertain environments and hence that more risk-averse individuals are less likely to become an entrepreneur. Empirical tests of this assumption are scarce however, mainly ...
2006| Marco Caliendo, Frank M. Fossen, Alexander S. Kritikos
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DIW Discussion Papers 599 / 2006
In this study we have addressed the relationship between the stock market, the measure of real economic activity (represented by the real GDP), the economic sentiment indicator, and real interest rate for the five European countries: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. We find that even when accounting for expectations, represented by the economic sentiment indicator, the stock market ...
2006| Boriss Siliverstovs, Manh Ha Duong
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DIW Discussion Papers 598 / 2006
This paper suggests a novel approach to pre-selection of the component series of the diffusion index based on their individual forecasting performance. It is shown that this targeted selection allows substantially improving the forecasting ability compared to the diffusion index models that are based on the largest available dataset.
2006| Boriss Siliverstovs, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 597 / 2006
Gazprom, the dominant gas company in Russia, is widely believed to be the key supplier of gas to Europe in the foreseeable future. However, there are numerous uncertainties and challenges within the Russian and European gas industry that may alter the allocation of Gazprom´s gas sales between domestic and export markets. In this paper we use both theoretical and numerical models to study potential ...
2006| Eirik Lund Sagen, Marina Tsygankova
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DIW Discussion Papers 596 / 2006
This paper presents a detailed investigation of the wealth effect for 16 industrial countries using the recently proposed technique that exploits the sluggishness of consumption growth. I argue that, compared to the widespread cointegration-based methodology, the approach I apply has better theoretical foundations and is more immune to parameter instability. Empirically, this new technique implies ...
2006| Jiri Slacalek
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DIW Discussion Papers 595 / 2006
This study develops a time series model of Turkish migration to Germany for the period 1963-2004 using the cointegration technique. A single cointegrating relation between the migration flow variable and the relative income ratio between Germany and Turkey, the unemployment rates in Germany and Turkey, and the trade variable, that captures intensity of bilateral economic cooperation, is found. By including ...
2006| Sule Akkoyunlu, Boriss Siliverstovs
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DIW Discussion Papers 594 / 2006
We investigate the effects of regional and industry-wide foreign presence and foreign direct investment (FDI) on export volumes of Ukrainian manufacturing firms using unpublished panel data from 1996-2000. Foreign presence through FDI may have negative competition effects on domestic firms' performance while, at the same time, domestic firms' productivity may be increased by technology transfer or ...
2006| Stefan Lutz, Oleksandr Talavera, Sang-Min Park
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DIW Discussion Papers 593 / 2006
This paper examines the implication of the move to CAPI for data quality by analyzing the conversion from PAPI to CAPI of a subsample of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) which was done within an experimental design. The 2000 addresses for the sample E of SOEP were split into two subsamples E1 and E2 with the same structure using twin - sample points. Each of the 125 sample points contained 16 ...
2006| Jörg-Peter Schräpler, Jürgen Schupp, Gert G. Wagner
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DIW Discussion Papers 592 / 2006
In this paper we investigate how the expulsion of a player influences the out-come of a football match. Common sense implies a negative impact for the affected team. However, an old football myth suggests that such an expulsion might also be beneficial since it increases the team spirit as well as the efforts of the affected team. We make use of a unique dataset containing all games played in a World ...
2006| Marco Caliendo, Dubravko Radic
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DIW Discussion Papers 591 / 2006
The traditional approach to measuring allocative efficiency is based on input prices, which are rarely known at the firm level. This paper proposes a new approach to measure allocative efficiency which is based on the output-oriented distance to the frontier in a profit - technical efficiency space - and which does not require information on input prices. To validate the new approach, we perform a ...
2006| Oleg Badunenko, Michael Fritsch, Andreas Stephan
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DIW Discussion Papers 590 / 2006
Using a unique, large panel of German firms, we examine whether participation in business groups reduces the sensitivity of investment to cash flow. The main finding is that the reduction in the sensitivity is small for small firms and negligible for medium and large firms. We argue that by virtue of the continental business model, gains from business groups should be in better contract enforcement ...
2006| Dorothea Schäfer, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Oleksandr Talavera
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DIW Discussion Papers 589 / 2006
In this study we first analyze duties on passenger cars in 27 European countries. Taxes and fees related to the registration, ownership and use of cars are assessed differently across Europe, and their rates vary significantly. We find that the annual taxes levied on specific types of cars differ across countries by a factor of up to four, while the various kinds of duties levied account for extremely ...
2006| Uwe Kunert, Hartmut Kuhfeld
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DIW Discussion Papers 588 / 2006
The aim of this paper is to decompose cross-national differences in self-reported general health into parts explained by differences in "true" health, measured by diagnosed conditions and measurements, and parts explained by cross-cultural differences in response styles. The data used were drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe 2004 (SHARE), using information from 22,000 ...
2006| Hendrik Jürges
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DIW Discussion Papers 587 / 2006
This paper examines how electronic procurement influences the organization of economic transactions. It seeks evidence for ICT-induced changes in how companies organize their activities and whether ICT lead to more competitive and transparent markets. Testing the relationship between the effect of electronic procurement on procurement cost and sourcing strategy, I provide new evidence that electronic ...
2006| Daniel Nepelski
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DIW Discussion Papers 586 / 2006
Like other data quality dimensions, the concept of accuracy is often adopted to characterise a particular data set. However, its common specification basically refers to statistical properties of estimators, which can hardly be proved by means of a single survey at hand. This ambiguity can be resolved by assigning 'accuracy' to survey processes that are known to affect these properties. In this contribution, ...
2006| Carsten Kuchler, Martin Spieß