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DIW Discussion Papers 1947 / 2021
We study the effectiveness, spillovers, and well-being effects of low emission zones in Germany, an emission-intensity-based driving restriction rapidly growing in popularity. Using regression discontinuity and group-time difference-in-differences designs, we show that previous estimates of the policy’s impact on traffic-related air pollution significantly underestimate its effectiveness. We provide ...
2021| Luis Sarmiento, Nicole Wägner, Aleksandar Zaklan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1946 / 2021
We study the impact of selection bias on estimates of the gender pay gap, focusing on whether the gender pay gap has fallen since 1981. Previous research has found divergent results across techniques, identification strategies, data sets, and time periods. Using Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data and a number of different identification strategies, we find robust evidence that, after controlling ...
2021| Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn, Nikolai Boboshko, Matthew Comey
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DIW Discussion Papers 1945 / 2021
Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies worldwide, many of which target or impact local communities. Although research, international development, and policy implementation (and, thus, success in fighting both threats) require thoughtful consideration and communication of the underlying concepts, field work encounters a cascade of tangible barriers. Technoscientific representations of ...
2021| Dawud Ansari, Regine Schönenberg, Melissa Abud, Laura Becerra, Anne Cristina de la Vega-Leinert, Nigel Dudley, Michael Dunlop, Carolina Figueroa, Oscar Guevara, Philipp Hauser, Hannes Hobbie, Mostafa A. R. Hossain, Jean Hugé, Luc Janssens de Bisthoven, Hilde Keunen, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Jan Petzold, Anne-Julie Rochette, Matthew Schmidt, Charlotte Schumann, Sayanti Sengupta, Susanne Stoll-Kleemann, Lorrae van Kerkhoff, Maarten P. M. Vanhove, Carina Wyborn
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DIW Discussion Papers 1944 / 2021
This paper evaluates the temporary VAT reduction introduced by the German government over the third and fourth quarter of 2020 as most controversial part of the COVID-19 stimulus package. Critics argue that VAT reductions are ineffective because of limited pass-through of temporary measures to consumer prices and in presence of lockdown measures. Advocates emphasize positive effects on durables and ...
2021| Marius Clemens, Werner Röger
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DIW Discussion Papers 1943 / 2021
Since the European debt crisis economists and politicians discuss intensively the sovereign-bank nexus. The high activity in sovereign bond issuance required to mitigate the burden of the Covid19 crisis will rather intensify this debate than calm it down. Surprisingly, however, we still have only limited knowledge about the impact of a home bias in sovereign exposure on bank stability. This paper provides ...
2021| Dominik Meyland, Dorothea Schäfer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1942 / 2021
This paper contributes to the debate on the internationalization of the R&D activity of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Specifically, we examine the following research questions: (1) What are the determinants of the MNEs’ R&D internationalization level? (2) What types of internationalization strategies—home-base-augmenting (HBA), home-base-exploiting (HBE), technology-seeking (TS), and/or market-seeking ...
2021| Heike Belitz, Anna Lejpras
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DIW Discussion Papers 1941 / 2021
For the design of the pension system, it is crucial to disentangle the employment responses related to the substitution effect and the income effect. In this paper, we provide causal evidence regarding the importance of the income effect, which is generally assumed to be small or non-existent. We exploit a pension reform in Germany that raised pension bene- fits related to children. For the identification, ...
2021| Sebastian Becker, Hermann Buslei, Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1940 / 2021
A major challenge for proxy vector autoregressive analysis is the construction of a suitable external instrument variable or proxy for identifying a shock of interest. Some authors construct sophisticated proxies that account for the dating and size of the shock while other authors consider simpler versions that use only the dating and signs of particular shocks. It is shown that such qualitative (sign-)proxies ...
2021| Lukas Boer, Helmut Lütkepohl
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DIW Discussion Papers 1939 / 2021
Large-scale data show promise to provide efficiency gains through individualized risk predictions in many business and policy settings. Yet, assessments of the degree of data-enabled efficiency improvements remain scarce. We quantify the value of the availability of a variety of data combinations for tackling the policy problem of curbing antibiotic resistance, where the reduction of inefficient antibiotic ...
2021| Shan Huang, Michael Allan Ribers, Hannes Ullrich
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DIW Discussion Papers 1938 / 2021
This papers analyzes the effect of the ECB’s Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP) and the recent Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) on the yields of eligible green bonds, a new but rapidly growing segment of the corporate bond market. We exploit these policy changes using a difference-in-differences strategy, with ineligible corporate green bonds issued in euro, U.S. dollars and Swedish ...
2021| Franziska Bremus, Franziska Schütze, Aleksandar Zaklan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1937 / 2021
We study the relationship between crowding and performance in the active mutual fund industry. We construct a fund-specific measure of crowding using the equity holdings overlap of 17,364 global funds. Funds in the top decile of crowding underperform passive benchmark funds by 1.4% per year. The impact of crowding on performance cannot be attributed to diseconomies of scale. We explore several mechanisms: ...
2021| Tanja Artiga Gonzalez, Teodor Dyakov, Justus Inhoffen, Evert Wipplinger
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DIW Discussion Papers 1936 / 2021
This paper provides evidence for the propagation of idiosyncratic mortgage supply shocks to the macroeconomy. Based on micro-level data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for the 1990-2016 period, our results suggest that lender-specific mortgage supply shocks affect aggregate mortgage, house price, and employment dynamics at the regional level. The larger the idiosyncratic shocks to newly issued ...
2021| Franziska Bremus, Thomas Krause, Felix Noth
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DIW Discussion Papers 1935 / 2021
For the European Union to realise its ambition of carbon neutrality, emissions from basic material production need to be reduced through low-carbon production processes, material efficiency and substitution, as well as enhanced recycling. Different reform options for the EU ETS are discussed that ensure a consistent carbon price incentive for all these mitigation options, while avoiding the risk of ...
2021| Jan Stede, Stefan Pauliuk, Gilang Hardadi, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1934 / 2021
This paper analyzes two dimensions of factors of political trust in Russia. The first dimension is the target dimension (sociotropic vs. egocentric), the second dimension is the time dimension (retrospective vs. perspective). The study is based on the microdata of 2016 Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. We find a robust evidence in favor of the ...
2021| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Vyacheslav N. Ovchinnikov, Marina Yu. Malkina, Igor A. Moiseev
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DIW Discussion Papers 1933 / 2021
As the institutional literature convincingly shows, socioeconomic phenomena are to a large extent shaped by the formal institutions, that is, legal acts (laws and ordinances). However, the latter are formulated in a specific language that is difficult to understand, let alone to measure. However, since the early 1990s, a whole branch of economic analysis of governmental regulations has evolved. It is ...
2021| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Linus Pfeiffer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1932 / 2021
Social norms have been put forward as prominent explanations for the changing labour supply decisions of women. This paper studies the intergenerational formation of these norms, examining how they affect subsequent female labour supply decisions, taking into account not only the early socialization of women but also that of their partner. Using large representative panel data sets from West Germany, ...
2021| Sophia Schmitz, C. Katharina Spieß
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DIW Discussion Papers 1931 / 2021
We provide an evaluation of the impact of German public subsidy schemes in municipalities of Bavaria and Lower Saxony aimed at supporting the deployment of basic broadband infrastructure in rural Germany. Such subsidies are subject to state aid control by the European Commission and may only be granted if the potential market failure is addressed without distorting competition. We first analyse the ...
2021| Tomaso Duso, Mattia Nardotto, Jo Seldeslachts
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DIW Discussion Papers 1930 / 2021
An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level while firm level revenues are a poor indicator of product sales. We use a novel database that identifies over ...
2021| Pauline Affeldt, Tomaso Duso, Klaus Gugler, Joanna Piechucka
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DIW Discussion Papers 1929 / 2021
Wir untersuchen erstmals anhand von repräsentativen Daten für die Privatwirtschaft (Verdienststrukturerhebung 2014) Anteile und Höhe von umgewandelten Entgelten nach verschiedenen individuellen und betrieblichen Merkmalen der Beschäftigten in Deutschland. Deskriptive wie multivariate Regressionsanalysen weisen sowohl auf eine selektive Teilnahmebereitschaft zur Umwandlung als auch auf eine mit steigendem ...
2021| Johannes Geyer, Ralf Himmelreicher
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DIW Discussion Papers 1928 / 2021
In 2020, Berlin enacted a rigorous rent-control policy: the “Mietendeckel” (rent freeze), aiming to stop rapidly growing rental prices. We evaluate this newly enacted but old-fashionably designed policy by analyzing its immediate supply-side effects. Using a rich pool of rent advertisements reporting asking rents and comprehensive dwelling characteristics, we perform hedonic-style Difference-in-Difference ...
2021| Anja M. Hahn, Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Sofie R. Waltl