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DIW Discussion Papers 1887 / 2020
We investigate the dimensions through which R&D spillovers are propagated across firms via cooperation through Research Joint Ventures (RJVs). We build on the framework developed by Bloom et al. (2013) which considers the opposing effects of technology spillovers and product market rivalry, and extend it to account for RJVs. Our main findings are that the adverse effects of product market rivalry are ...
2020| Albert Banal-Estañol, Tomaso Duso, Jo Seldeslachts, Florian Szücs
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DIW Discussion Papers 1886 / 2020
When analyzing potential ways to counter climate change, standard models of green growth abstract from investment in substitutability between “clean” and “dirty” energy inputs. Instead, they rely on the assumption that efficiency with respect to fossil fuels can be increased perpetually. However, this is not in line with observed firm investment behavior and the limits to efficiency imposed by thermodynamic ...
2020| Fabian Stöckl
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DIW Discussion Papers 1885 / 2020
We fit CES and VES production functions to data from a numerical bottom-up optimization model of electricity supply with clean and dirty inputs. This approach allows for studying high shares of clean energy not observable today and for isolating mechanisms that impact the elasticity of substitution between clean and dirty energy. Central results show that (i) dirty inputs are not essential for production. ...
2020| Fabian Stöckl, Alexander Zerrahn
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DIW Discussion Papers 1884 / 2020
We study repayment and delinquency in an innovative loan contract that offers borrowers a wide range of flexibility. Using a large administrative dataset, we perform unsupervised pattern analysis to study how borrowers repay within the framework of this loan. We identify eight clusters that can be grouped into three distinct repayment types. We show that borrowers with fluctuating incomes and limited ...
2020| Antonia Grohmann, Steffen Herbold, Friederike Lenel
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DIW Discussion Papers 1883 / 2020
Due to its technical complexity, the co-production of electricity generation and nuclear weapons, and its high fixed costs, nuclear power is a particularly complex commodity, which poses unusual challenges for state economic (or industrial, defense, innovation etc.) policy. As in other sectors, the question arises here, too, of an adequate division of private and public responsibilities, in other words ...
2020| Ben Wealer, Christian von Hirschhausen
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DIW Discussion Papers 1882 / 2020
Based on findings from high-income countries, typically economists hypothesize that having more children unambiguously decreases the time mothers spend in the labor mar- ket. Few studies on lower-income countries, in which low household wealth, informal child care, and informal employment opportunities prevail, find mixed results. Using Mexican census data, I find a positive effect of an instrument-induced ...
2020| Julia Schmieder
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DIW Discussion Papers 1881 / 2020
“Sin taxes” are high on the political agenda in the global fight against obesity. Ac- cording to theory, they are welfare improving if consumers with low self-control are at least as price responsive as consumers with high self-control, even in the absence of ex- ternalities. In this paper, we investigate if consumers with low and high self-control react differently to sin tax variation. For identification, ...
2020| Renke Schmacker, Sinne Smed
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DIW Discussion Papers 1880 / 2020
Coal consumption and production have sharply declined in recent years in the U.S., despite political support. Reasons are mostly unfavorable economic conditions for coal, including competition from natural gas and renewables in the power sector, as well as an aging coal- fired power plant fleet. The U.S. Energy Information Administration as well as most models of North American energy markets depict ...
2020| Christian Hauenstein, Franziska Holz
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DIW Discussion Papers 1879 / 2020
I posit that hourly changes in air pollution affect criminality through two distinct pathways, via physiological effects on the criminal and by changes in the tightness of the market for criminal activities. To disentangle individual from market effects, I develop a behavioral model of the individual decision to transgress and a model of search-and-matching frictions between criminals and crime opportunities. ...
2020| Luis Sarmiento
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DIW Discussion Papers 1878 / 2020
I assert that air pollution from nitrogen oxides affects the productivity of employees in Mexican court hearings. This is the first article analyzing this connection and the first to disentangle work-breaks from the productivity of white-collar workers. I merge hourly pollution with granular hearing data under the assumption that the length of the hearing approximates productivity and identify causality ...
2020| Luis Sarmiento
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DIW Discussion Papers 1877 / 2020
This paper uses a panel of German individuals and highly granular pollution data to test if air pollution affects adults’ well-being indirectly through the health of their children. Results show that ozone decreases the well-being of individuals with children while not affecting persons without kids. We confirm the same effect for fine particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. Concerning the mechanism, ...
2020| Julia Rechlitz, Luis Sarmiento, Aleksandar Zaklan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1876 / 2020
In proxy vector autoregressive models, the structural shocks of interest are identified by an instrument. Although heteroskedasticity is occasionally allowed for, it is typically taken for granted that the impact effects of the structural shocks are time-invariant despite the change in their variances. We develop a test for this implicit assumption and present evidence that the assumption of time-invariant ...
2020| Helmut Lütkepohl, Thore Schlaak
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DIW Discussion Papers 1875 / 2020
We examine whether a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions creates stakeholder pressure for firms to subsequently reduce their emissions. For UK-incorporated listed firms such a mandate was adopted in 2013. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that firms affected by the mandate reduced their emissions – depending on the specification – by an incremental 14-18% relative to a control ...
2020| Benedikt Downar, Jürgen Ernstberger, Stefan Reichelstein, Sebastian Schwenen, Aleksandar Zaklan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1874 / 2020
A two-sector incomplete markets model with heterogeneous agents can be used to study the distributional effects of the COVID-19 lockdown. While negative aggregate welfare effects of the lockdown are unavoidable, the size of aggregate welfare effects as well as the distribution of the welfare effects across agents turn out to depend on the specific economic environment of the affected economy as well ...
2020| Marius Clemens, Maik Heinemann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1873 / 2020
Recent proposals for a still missing European deposit insurance scheme (EDIS) argue in favor of a reinsurance framework. In this paper, we use a regime-switching open-economy DSGE model with bank default to assess the relative efficiency of such a scheme. We find that reinsurance by EDIS is more effective in stabilizing real activity, credit, and welfare than a national fiscal backstop. We demonstrate ...
2020| Marius Clemens, Stefan Gebauer, Tobias König
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DIW Discussion Papers 1872 / 2020
We reexamine whether pre-Volcker U.S. fiscal policy was active or passive. To do so, we estimate a DSGE model with monetary and fiscal policy interactions employing a sequential Monte Carlo algorithm (SMC) for posterior evaluation. Unlike existing studies, we do not have to treat each policy regime as distinct, separately estimated, models. Rather, SMC enables us to estimate the DSGE model over its entire ...
2020| Stephanie Ettmeier, Alexander Kriwoluzky
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DIW Discussion Papers 1871 / 2020
In conventional structural vector autoregressive (VAR) models it is assumed that there are at most as many structural shocks as there are variables in the model. It is pointed out that heteroskedasticity can be used to identify more shocks than variables. However, even if there is heteroskedasticity, the number of shocks that can be identified is limited. A number of results are provided that allow ...
2020| Helmut Lütkepohl
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DIW Discussion Papers 1870 / 2020
Policymakers have implemented a wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions to fight the spread of COVID-19. Variation in policies across jurisdictions and over time strongly suggests a difference-in-differences (DD) research design to estimate causal effects of counter-COVID measures. We discuss threats to the validity of these DD designs and make recommendations about how researchers can avoid ...
2020| Andrew Goodman-Bacon, Jan Marcus
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DIW Discussion Papers 1869 / 2020
This paper analyzes the causal relationship between institutional diversity in domestic banking sectors and bank stability. We use a large bank- and country-level unbalanced panel data set covering the EU member states’ banking sectors between 1998 and 2014. Constructing two distinct indicators for measuring institutional diversity, we find that a high degree of institutional diversity in the domestic ...
2020| Christopher F. Baum, Caterina Forti Grazzini, Dorothea Schäfer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1868 / 2020
Understanding the causes of the slowdown in aggregate productivity growth is key to maintaining the competitiveness of advanced economies and ensuring long-term economic prosperity. This paper is the first to provide evidence that investment in Knowledge-Based Capital (KBC), despite having a positive effect on productivity at the micro level, is a driver of the weak productivity performance at the ...
2020| Marie Le Mouel, Alexander Schiersch