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DIW Discussion Papers 1266 / 2013
Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First, rather than ethno-linguistic or racial heterogeneity, we analyze religious diversity, which in many countries ...
2013| Ronny Freier, Benny Geys, Joshua Holm
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DIW Discussion Papers 1265 / 2013
We exploit migration patterns from the UK to Australia, South Africa, and the US to investigate whether a person's decision to smoke is determined by culture. For each country, we use retrospective data to describe individual smoking trajectories over the life-course. For the UK, we use these trajectories to measure culture by cohort and cohort-age, and more accurately relative to the extant literature. ...
2013| Rebekka Christopoulou, Dean R. Lillard
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DIW Discussion Papers 1264 / 2013
Despite high economic growth during the last decades, China is still vulnerable to shocks arising from industrial states. The advanced economies determine Chinese export performance, with subsequent effects on output growth. Using a production function approach, this paper examines to which extent regional GDP growth in China is export driven. In a panel of 28 Chinese provinces, series are splitted ...
2013| Christian Dreger, Yanqun Zhang
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DIW Discussion Papers 1263 / 2013
Chinese companies have become major technology producers, with the largest share of their output exported. This paper examines the development of solar PV and wind energy technology component (WETC) exports from China and the competitive position of the country`s renewable energy industry. We also describe the government's renewable energy policy and its success in renewable electricity generation ...
2013| Jing Cao, Felix Groba
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DIW Discussion Papers 1262 / 2012
This paper studies the importance of politician's qualification, in terms of education and experience, for fiscal outcomes. The analysis is based on a large panel for 2,031 German municipalities for which we have collected information on municipal budgets as well as the election results and qualification levels of mayoral candidates. We principally use a Regression Discontinuity Design focusing on ...
2012| Ronny Freier, Sebastian Thomasius
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DIW Discussion Papers 1261 / 2012
The North and Baltic Sea Grid is one of the largest pan-European infrastructure projects raising high hopes regarding the potential of harnessing large amounts of renewable electricity, but also concerns about the implementation in largely nationally dominated regulatory regimes. The paper develops three idealtype development scenarios and quantifies the technical-economic effects: i) the Status quo ...
2012| Jonas Egerer, Friedrich Kunz, Christian von Hirschhausen
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DIW Discussion Papers 1260 / 2012
A shortage of skilled labor and low female labor market participation are problems many developed countries have to face. Beside activating inactive women, one possible solution is to support the re-integration of unemployed women. Due to female-specific labor market constraints (preferences for exible working hours, discrimination), this is a difficult task, and the question arises whether active ...
2012| Marco Caliendo, Steffen Künn
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DIW Discussion Papers 1259 / 2012
Identification of shocks of interest is a central problem in structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) modelling. Identification is often achieved by imposing restrictions on the impact or long-run effects of shocks or by considering sign restrictions for the impulse responses. In a number of articles changes in the volatility of the shocks have also been used for identification. The present study focusses ...
2012| Helmut Lütkepohl
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DIW Discussion Papers 1258 / 2012
Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are the most popular U.S. state-level policies for promoting deployment of renewable electricity (RES-E). While several econometric studies have estimated the effect of RPS on in-state RES-E deployment, results are contradictory. We reconcile these studies and move toward a definitive answer to the question of RPS effectiveness. We conduct an analysis using time ...
2012| Gireesh Shrimali, Steffen Jenner, Felix Groba, Gabriel Chan, Joe Indvik
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DIW Discussion Papers 1257 / 2012
This paper summarizes the micro-level survey evidence from Central Asia generated and analyzed between 1991 and 2012. We provide an exhaustive overview over all accessible individual and household-level surveys undertaken in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - and of all English-language academic papers published using these datasets. We argue that Central Asia is a fascinating ...
2012| Tilman Brück, Damir Esenaliev, Antje Kroeger, Alma Kudebayeva, Bakhrom Mirkasimov, Susan Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1256 / 2012
This paper studies the effect of attending a high-quality secondary school on subsequent educational outcomes. The analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study in which we observe children when they make their secondary school choice (between ages 10-12) and later when they self-report on their intentions with regard to their further educational path (between ages 16-17). To ...
2012| Ronny Freier, Johanna Storck
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DIW Discussion Papers 1255 / 2012
This paper uses long-range dependence techniques to analyse two important features of the US Federal Funds effective rate, namely its persistence and cyclical behaviour. It examines annual, monthly, bi-weekly and weekly data, from 1954 until 2010. Two models are considered. One is based on an I(d) specification with AR(2) disturbances and the other on two fractional differencing structures, one at ...
2012| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1254 / 2012
This paper adopts a flexible framework to assess both short- and long-run business cycle linkages between six Latin American (LA) countries and the four largest economies in the world (namely the US, the Euro area, Japan and China) over the period 1980:I-2011:IV. The result indicate that within the LA region there are considerable differences between countries, success stories coexisting with extremely ...
2012| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Alessandro Girardi
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DIW Discussion Papers 1253 / 2012
The liberalisation of the natural gas markets and the importance of natural gas as a transition fuel to a low-carbon economy have led to the development of several large-scale equilibrium models in the last decade. These models combine long-term market equilibria and investments in infrastructure while accounting for market power by certain suppliers. They are widely used to simulate market outcomes ...
2012| Daniel Huppmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1252 / 2012
We investigate horizontal inequality between two conflictive ethnic groups, the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, by employing the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. This technique has a long tradition in labour economics but has not been used in the literature that links ethnic inequality and violent conflict. We measure welfare differentials between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks and find that, depending on the ...
2012| Damir Esenaliev, Susan Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1251 / 2012
The study analyses the relationship between access to rural product markets and the extent and nature of child labour. It is built on the view that if physical markets can shape rural development through, for instance, influencing prices, household production decisions and employment, the associated activity growth could increase child labour. Using household survey data from Uganda, I find that children ...
2012| Tony Muhumuza
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DIW Discussion Papers 1250 / 2012
This article presents an integrated electricity dispatch and load flow model with endogenous electricity generation capacity expansion. The target is to quantify generation capacity requirements for 2030 and where within Central Europe it shall be ideally placed when taking into account the projected grid structure. We explicitly model the interdependence between grid operation and power plant placing ...
2012| Andreas Schröder, Maximilian Bracke
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DIW Discussion Papers 1249 / 2012
We analyse the relationship between the debt to GDP ratio and real per capita GDP growth for the euro area members by distinguishing between periods of sustainable and non-sustainable debt. Thresholds are theory-based and depend on the macroeconomic framework. If the interest rate exceeds nominal output growth, primary budget surpluses are required to achieve a sustainable debt ratio. The negative ...
2012| Christian Dreger, Hans-Eggert Reimers
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DIW Discussion Papers 1248 / 2012
This paper examines the degree of persistence of youth unemployment (total, male and female) in twenty-four countries by using two alternative measures: the AR coefficient and the fractional differencing parameter, based on short- and longmemory processes respectively. The evidence suggests that persistence is particularly high in Japan and some EU countries such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Finland, ...
2012| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1247 / 2012
In this paper we examine the Marshall-Lerner (ML) condition for the Kenyan economy. In particular, we use quarterly data on the log of real exchange rates, export-import ratio and relative (US) income for the time period 1996q1 - 2011q4, and employ techniques based on the concept of long memory or long-range dependence. Specifically, we use fractional integration and cointegration methods, which are ...
2012| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana, Robert Mudida