-
DIW Discussion Papers 1800 / 2019
I study the predictability of the EC’s merger decision procedure before and after the 2004 merger policy reform based on a dataset covering all affected markets of mergers with an official decision documented by DG Comp between 1990 and 2014. Using the highly flexible, non-parametric random forest algorithm to predict DG Comp’s assessment of competitive concerns in markets affected by a merger, I find ...
2019| Pauline Affeldt
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1799 / 2019
We exploit the natural experiment of German reunification in 1990 to investigate if the institutional regimes of the formerly socialist (rather gender-equal) East Germany and the capitalist (rather gender-traditional) West Germany shaped different gender identity prescriptions of family breadwinning. We use data for three periods between 1984 and 2016 from the representative German Socio-Economic Panel ...
2019| Maximilian Sprengholz, Anna Wieber, Elke Holst
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1798 / 2019
Offen ausgetragenen Lagerdebatten zwischen Ökonomen sind in Deutschland eher selten. Was hingegen öfters in Diskussionen oder in der Berichterstattung über Ökonomen mitschwingt, ist eine Zuordnung in weltanschauliche Lager, etwa nach Schemata wie arbeitgeber-arbeitnehmernah oder auch gelegentlich links-wirtschaftsliberal. Da diese Zuordnung für die nicht an der Spitze der öffentlichen Bekanntheit stehenden ...
2019| Wolfgang Schwarzbauer, Tobias Thomas, Gert G. Wagner
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1797 / 2019
We study the evolution of the EC’s merger decision procedure over the first 25 years of European competition policy. Using a novel dataset constructed at the level of the relevant markets and containing all merger cases over the 1990-2014 period, we evaluate how consistently arguments related to structural market parameters were applied over time. Using non-parametric machine learning techniques, we ...
2019| Pauline Affeldt, Tomaso Duso, Florian Szücs
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1796 / 2019
Structural VAR models are frequently identified using sign restrictions on contemporaneous impulse responses. We develop a methodology that can handle a set of prior distributions that is much larger than the one currently allowed for by traditional methods. We then develop an importance sampler that explores the posterior distribution just as conveniently as with traditional approaches. This makes ...
2019| Martin Bruns, Michele Piffer
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1795 / 2019
We examine whether mandatory disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions influences companies’ GHG emission levels. We identify the disclosure effect by exploiting a mandate requiring UK-incorporated listed companies to disclose information on GHG emissions in their annual reports. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that disclosing GHG emissions in annual reports reduces emission levels ...
2019| Benedikt Downar, Jürgen Ernstberger, Hannes Rettenbacher, Sebastian Schwenen, Aleksandar Zaklan
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1794 / 2019
Germany has a large persistent Gender Pay Gap of 21 %; although this gap is not constant across occupations. The question arises why some occupations have large Gender Pay Gaps while others have only small gaps. Using data from the Structural Earnings Study merged with occupational task information provided by the Federal Labor Office, this paper aims to uncover the relationship between occupational ...
2019| Aline Zucco
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1793 / 2019
This paper presents non-take-up rates of benefits from the German Income Support for Job Seekers scheme, called Unemployment Benefit II (Arbeitslosengeld II ). Eligibility to these benefits is simulated by applying a microsimulation model based on data from the Socio-economic Panel for the years 2005 to 2014. To ensure the quality of the results, feasible upper and lower bounds of nontake-up are shown ...
2019| Michelle Harnisch
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1792 / 2019
We quantify the causal link between exchange rate movements and sovereign risk of 16 major emerging market economies (EMEs) by means of structural vector autoregressive models (SVARs) using data from 10/2004 through 12/2016. We apply a novel data based identification approach of the structural shocks that allows to account for the complex interrelations within the triad of exchange rates, sovereign ...
2019| Kerstin Bernoth, Helmut Herwartz
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1791 / 2019
Part-time work has vastly expanded in most OECD labor markets during the last decades. At the same time, full- and part-time wages have grown increasingly apart, leading to a substantial raw part-time wage penalty. Using quantile regression methods, this paper analyses the female part-time wage gap across the wage distribution and over time (1990-2009), while controlling for sample selection into full- ...
2019| Patricia Gallego Granados
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1790 / 2019
The Trump administration has promised to stop the spiraling down of the U.S. coal industry that has been going on for several years. We discuss the origins of the decline of the U.S. coal industry and new policy interventions by the Trump administration. We find that a further decrease of coal consumption in the U.S. electricity sector must be expected because of the old and inefficient U.S. coal-fired ...
2019| Roman Mendelevitch, Christian Hauenstein, Franziska Holz
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1789 / 2019
The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math and language test scores for adults in Germany, the identification of the long-term causal effects exploits ...
2019| Katja Görlitz, Merlin Penny, Marcus Tamm
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1788 / 2019
This paper analyzes the effect of agglomeration economies on firms’ total factor productivity. We propose the use of a control function approach to overcome the econometric issue inherent to the two-stage approach commonly used in the literature. Estimations are conducted separately for four industry groups, defined by technological intensity, to allow for non-uniform effects of agglomeration economies ...
2019| Martin Gornig, Alexander Schiersch
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1787 / 2019
Starting from December 2012, insurers in the European Union were prohibited from charging gender-discriminatory prices. We examine the effect of this unisex mandate on risk segmentation in the German health insurance market. While gender used to be a pricing factor in Germany's private health insurance (PHI) sector, it was never used as a pricing factor in the social health insurance (SHI) sector. ...
2019| Shan Huang, Martin Salm
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1786 / 2019
Dieser Beitrag möchte einen Impuls zur stärkeren Berücksichtigung von Genderaspekten in makroökonomischen Modellen geben. Am Beispiel der Philipps-Kurve geht es um die Frage, ob sich das Erwerbsverhalten von Frauen und Männern so stark voneinander unterscheidet, dass sich dies im Verlauf des Zusammenhangs von Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit niederschlägt. Erste Hinweise dafür werden in deskriptiven ...
2019| Elke Holst, Denise Barth
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1785 / 2019
Case and Deaton (2015) document that, since 1998, midlife mortality rates are increasing for white non-Hispanics in the US. This trend is driven by deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related diseases, termed as deaths of despair, and by the subgroup of low-educated individuals. In contrast, average mortality for middle-aged men and women continued to decrease in several other high-income ...
2019| Peter Haan, Anna Hammerschmid, Julia Schmieder
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1784 / 2019
This paper provides the first comprehensive review of the empirical and theoretical literature on the determinants of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. Our focus is on the two-input constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function. By example of the U.S., we highlight the distinctive heterogeneity in empirical estimates of σ at both the aggregate and industrial ...
2019| Michael Knoblach, Fabian Stöckl
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1783 / 2019
Fairtrade certification aims at transferring wealth from the consumer to the farmer; however, coffee passes through many hands before reaching final consumers. Bringing together retail, wholesale, and stock market data, this study estimates how much more consumers are paying for Fairtrade-certified coffee in US supermarkets and finds estimates around $1 per lb. I then assess how this price premium ...
2019| Helene Naegele
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1782 / 2019
Existing long-term energy and climate scenarios are typically a rather simple extrapolation of past trends. Both qualitative and quantitative outlooks co-exist, but they often focus narrowly on individual perspectives, which is opposed to the interlinked and complex nature of energy and climate. Therefore, this study presents a set of novel and multidisciplinary narratives that give insight into four ...
2019| Dawud Ansari, Franziska Holz, Hasan Basri Tosun
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1781 / 2019
We examine the credit channel of monetary policy from 2000 to 2015 in the Euro Area using daily monetary policy shock and credit risk measures in an autoregressive distributed lag model. We find that an expansionary monetary policy shock leads to a short-run increase in the credit risk of non-financial corporations. This dysfunctionality of the credit channel is driven by the crisis-dominated post-2009 ...
2019| Chi Hyun Kim, Lars Other