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DIW Discussion Papers 1667 / 2017
This paper revisits the Fisher hypothesis by estimating fractional integration and cointegration models that are more general than the standard ones based on the classical I(0)/I(1) dichotomy. Two sets of results are obtained under the alternative assumptions of white noise and Bloomfield (1973) autocorrelated errors respectively. The univariate analysis suggests than the differencing parameter is ...
2017| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1666 / 2017
In an urban economy, the distribution of people and real estate prices depends on the location of the central business district of a city. As distance from the city center increases, both prices and population density diminish, for travel costs increase in terms of time and money. As manufacturing gradually leaves the cities, the importance of consumer amenities as attractors of population to the urban ...
2017| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Irina Krylova, Darya Kryutchenko
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DIW Discussion Papers 1665 / 2017
In this paper, we examine the predictive ability of automatic and expert-rated media sentiment indicators for German inflation. We find that sentiment indicators are competitive in providing inflation forecasts against a large set of common macroeconomic and financial predictors. Sophisticated linguistic sentiment algorithms and business cycle news rated by experts perform best and are superior to ...
2017| Benjamin Beckers, Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Dirk Ulbricht
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DIW Discussion Papers 1664 / 2017
We present an ex-post analysis of the effects of GDF’s acquisition of Suez in 2006 created one of the world’s largest energy companies. We perform an econometric analysis, based on Difference-in-Difference techniques on the market for trading on the Zeebrugge gas hub in Belgium. Removing barriers to entry and facilitating access to the hub through ownership unbundling were an important part of the ...
2017| Elena Argentesi, Albert Banal-Estanol, Jo Seldeslachts, Meagan Andrews
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DIW Discussion Papers 1663 / 2017
Mexico plans to implement a national program to support the adoption of distributed photo-voltaic generation (DPVG) among qualified households. The main objectives of such a program would be to reduce the burden of the substantial federal energy subsidy and increase the share of renewable energy sources used to generate electricity. In this paper we assess the current conditions under which the Mexican ...
2017| Pedro I. Hancevic, Hector M. Nunez, Juan Rosellón
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DIW Discussion Papers 1662 / 2017
This paper addresses the behavioral puzzle of women’s preference for competition when competitors are also women. Using a framed field experiment with 883 non-standard subjects, we show that none of the determinants of competitive behavior in general, including ability, self-confidence and risk aversion, provide a satisfying explanation for women’s substantive gender-related selection into competition. ...
2017| Norma Burow, Miriam Beblo, Denis Beninger, Melanie Schröder
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DIW Discussion Papers 1661 / 2017
Euro area countries and Japan are confronted with similar challenges. Potential output is on a falling trend in the euro area, and the decrease started well before the financial crisis. In Japan, low output growth is a striking feature since many years, despite the unconventional monetary policy stance and massive fiscal stimulus programs provided by the government. According to a growth accounting ...
2017| Christian Dreger
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DIW Discussion Papers 1660 / 2017
Faster urbanization plays a key role in the Chinese economic transformation. However, at the Lewis turning point, the hukou institution constitutes a serious risk to the process, as it restricts the access of migrants to public services offered by cities. To attract further migration, firms started to accept a premium on top of the wage. Thus, the social discrimination introduced by the hukou system ...
2017| Christian Dreger, Yanqun Zhang
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DIW Discussion Papers 1659 / 2017
Kazakhstan envisions a transition towards a green economy in the next decades which poses an immense challenge as the country heavily depends on (hydro-)carbon resources, for both its economy and its energy system. In this context, there is a lack of comprehensive and transparent planning tools to assess possible sustainable development pathways in regard to their technical, economic, and environmental ...
2017| Makpal Assembayeva, Jonas Egerer, Roman Mendelevitch, Nurkhat Zhakiyev
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DIW Discussion Papers 1658 / 2017
Changing employment conditions lead to new chances, but also new risks for employees. In the literature, increasing permeability between occupational and private life is discussed as one special outcome of this development that employees must face, especially those in highly qualified positions. Drawing on existing research, we investigate in how far women and men in those positions differ in their ...
2017| Anne Busch-Heizmann, Elke Holst
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DIW Discussion Papers 1657 / 2017
Social norms and attitudes towards gender roles have been shown to have a large effect on economic outcomes of men and women. Many countries have introduced policies that aim at changing gender stereotypes, for example fathers’ quota in parental leave schemes. In this paper, we analyze whether the introduction of the fathers’ quota in Germany in 2007, that caused a sharp increase in the take-up of ...
2017| Ulrike Unterhofer, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 1656 / 2017
Abstract This paper expands the discussion about future balancing reserve provision to the long-term perspective of 2050. Most pathways for a transformation towards a decarbonized electricity sector rely on very high shares of fluctuating renewables. This can be a challenge for the provision of balancing reserves, although their influence on the balancing cost is unclear. Apart from the transformation ...
2017| Casimir Lorenz
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DIW Discussion Papers 1655 / 2017
This paper analyzes the influence of wind turbines as new participants on prices and allocation within balancing markets. We introduce the cost-minimizing electricity sector model ELMOD-MIP, that includes detailed unit-commitment constraints, complex combined heat and power constraints, and minimum bid sizes for balancing capacity reservation. The model also features a novel approach of modeling balancing ...
2017| Casimir Lorenz, Clemens Gerbaulet
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DIW Discussion Papers 1654 / 2017
We examine whether monetary transmission during the financial and sovereign debt crisis was dominated by the cost channel or by the demand-side channel effect. We use two approaches to track down the potential passthrough of changes in the monetary policy rate to those in consumer prices. First, we utilize panel data from the German manufacturing industry. Second, we conduct time series analyses for ...
2017| Dorothea Schäfer, Andreas Stephan, Khanh Trung Hoang
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DIW Discussion Papers 1653 / 2017
We present quasi-experimental evidence on the employment effects of an unprecedented large increase in the early retirement age (ERA). Raising the ERA has the potential to extend contribution periods and to reduce the number of pension beneficiaries at the same time, if employment exits are successfully delayed. However, workers may not be able to work longer or may choose other social support programs ...
2017| Johannes Geyer, Clara Welteke
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DIW Discussion Papers 1652 / 2017
Labor supply in the market for low-paid jobs in Germany is strongly influenced by tax exemptions - even for individuals to whom these exemptions do not apply. We present compelling evidence that an individual's choice set depends on other workers' preferences because firms cater their job offers to aggregate preferences in the market. We estimate an equilibrium job search model which rationalizes the ...
2017| Luke Haywood, Michael Neumann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1651 / 2017
This paper examines the effects of a substantial change in publicly funded paid parental leave in Germany on child development and socio-economic development gaps. For children born before January 1, 2007, parental leave benefits were means-tested and paid for up to 24 months after childbirth. For children born thereafter, parental leave benefits were earnings-related and only paid for up to 14 months. ...
2017| Mathias Huebener, Daniel Kuehnle, C. Katharina Spiess
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DIW Discussion Papers 1650 / 2017
This paper investigates how the withdrawal of banks from their cross-border business impacted the borrowing costs of European firms since the crisis. We combine aggregate information on total and cross-border credit with firm-level survey data for the period 2010 - 2014. We find that the decline in cross-border lending led to a deterioration in the borrowing conditions of small firms. In countries ...
2017| Franziska Bremus, Katja Neugebauer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1649 / 2017
Despite rather skeptical attitude of the economists toward the state intervention in the housing markets, the policy makers and general public typically are supporting it. As a result, in many European countries, since World War I the rent and eviction controls as well as social housing policies remain an important element of the government economic policies. Nevertheless, the macroeconomic effects ...
2017| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Julien Licheron
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DIW Discussion Papers 1648 / 2017
This paper analyses the stochastic properties of and the bilateral linkages between the central bank policy rates of the US, the Eurozone, Australia, Canada, Japan and the UK using fractional integration and cointegration techniques respectively. The univariate analysis suggests a high degree of persistence in all cases: the fractional integration parameter d is estimated to be above 1, ranging from ...
2017| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Hector Carcel, Luis A. Gil-Alana