Externe referierte Aufsätze

Entwicklung der Einkommensungleichheit in Deutschland und in der Schweiz seit der Jahrtausendwende

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt und vergleicht die Entwicklung der Einkommensungleichheit in der Schweiz und Deutschland von 2000 bis 2009 mit harmonisierten Daten des SOEP und des SHP. Während die Ungleichheit in Deutschland stark angestiegen ist, hat sie in der Schweiz beim Markteinkommen nur wenig zugenommen und beim verfügbaren Einkommen sogar leicht abgenommen. Die Zerlegung der Ungleichheit nach Altersgruppen, ...

Funding Self-Employment: The Role of Consumer Credit

This article investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans - in particular, instalment loans and overdrafts - to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and nonfinancial household variables, we show that self-employed households particularly use personal overdrafts significantly more often than employee households. When analysing the correlation between consumer loan ...

A Cross-National Perspective on Unemployment and First Births

This article investigates the impact of unemployment on the likelihood of having a first child. Using micro-data from the European Community Household Panel, I apply event history methods to analyze first-birth decisions in France, West Germany, and the UK (1994-2001). The results highlight weak negative effects of unemployment onfamily formation among men, which can be attributed to the inability ...

What about Coal? Interactions between Climate Policies and the Global Steam Coal Market until 2030

Because of economic growth and a strong increase in global energy demand the demand for fossil fuels and therefore also greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, although climate policy should lead to the opposite effect. The coal market is of special relevance as coal is available in many countries and often the first choice to meet energy demand. In this paper we assess possible interactions between ...

The End of Cheap Coal? A Techno-Economic Analysis until 2030 Using the COALMOD-World Model

Questions about the future availability of inexpensive coal supplies are rising. In this paper a numerical model is developed to investigate the evolution of the international market for steam coal used for electricity generation. The "COALMOD-World" model is an equilibrium model that computes future trade flows, infrastructure investments and prices until 2030. The model includes the major domestic ...

Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP)

Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP) ist die derzeit größte und am längsten laufende multidisziplinäre Langzeitstudie in Deutschland. Die erste Erhebungswelle fand 1984 in Westdeutschland statt; die Studie wurde dann im Juni 1990 auch auf Ostdeutschland ausgedehnt. Für das SOEP werden seit 1984 in Westdeutschland und seit 1990 in Ostdeutschland jedes Jahr mehr als 20.000 Menschen in über 10.000 Haushalten ...

Analyzing the Costs of Military Engagement

The Strategic Use of Private Quality Standards in Food Supply Chains

We explore the strategic role of private quality standards in food supply chains. Considering two symmetric retailers that are exclusively supplied by a finite number of producers and endogenizing the suppliers' delivery choice, we show that there exist two asymmetric equilibria in the retailers' quality requirements. Our results reveal that the retailers use private quality standards to improve their ...

Dealing with Incomplete Household Panel Data in Inequality Research

In trying to capture complete within-household heterogeneity, household panel surveys typically try to interview all adult household members. Following from this, such surveys tend to suffer from partial unit nonresponse (PUNR), that is, the nonresponse of at least one member of an otherwise participating household, most likely yielding an underestimation of aggregate household income. Using data from ...

Tragen ältere Menschen ein erhöhtes Armutsrisiko? Eine Dekompositions- und Mobilitätsanalyse relativer Einkommensarmut für das wiedervereinigte Deutschland

The Political Economy of the German Länder Deficits: Weak Governments Meet Strong Finance Ministers

We analyse the deficits of the German Länder (regional states) for the period 1960 to 2005 and test a number of hypotheses derived from the literature on the political economy of public deficits. We find evidence for the weak government hypothesis, that is, coalition governments issue significantly more debt than single party governments - a result that is typically explained by the common pool problem. ...

Der Einfluss von Erhebungsformen auf den Postmaterialismus-Index

Locational and Internal Sources of Firm Competitive Advantage: Applying Porter's Diamond Model at the Firm Level

This paper employs Porter's diamond model to examine the relationships between a firm's locational environment, its innovation capabilities, and competitive advantage assessed in terms of various performance indicators. The study implements a structural equation model estimated with the partial least squares (PLS) approach and reveals that frequent cooperation spurs innovation and performance but that, ...

Transmission Investment in the Peruvian Electricity Market: Theory and Applications

This research presents an application of the mechanism in Hogan et al. (2010) (HRV) to promote electricity transmission network expansion in the Peruvian electricity transmission system known as SEIN (Sistema Eléctrico Interconectado Nacional). The HRV mechanism combines the merchant and regulatory approaches to promote investment into transmission grids. This mechanism gives incentives for efficient ...

Sovereign Risk Premiums in the European Government Bond Market

This paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among EU government bonds on the basis of a unique data set of issue spreads in the US and DM (Euro) bond market between 1993 and 2009. Interest differentials between bonds issued by EU countries and Germany or the USA contain risk premiums which increase with fiscal imbalances and depend negatively on the issuer's relative bond market size. The ...

Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?

This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over ...

Anyone up for Helping the Fisherman's Wife? More Solidarity with Accidental Misery than with Man-Made Misery

We experimentally examine the willingness to donate depending on whether "misery" has been randomly generated or self-inflicted by too high demands in bilateral negotiations. Wefind that randomness has a positive influence on the total amount of the donation. In the case of self-inflicted "misery", we observe that the subject who may be perceived to have caused the unfavourable situation receives significantly ...

The Role of the Log Transformation in Forecasting Economic Variables

For forecasting and economic analysis many variables are used in logarithms (logs). In time series analysis, this transformation is often considered to stabilize the variance of a series. We investigate under which conditions taking logs is beneficial for forecasting. Forecasts based on the original series are compared to forecasts based on logs. For a range of economic variables, substantial forecasting ...

Labour Market Integration, Occupational Uncertainties, and Fertility Choices in Germany and the UK

The aim of this paper is to investigate how occupational prospects affect first-birth decisions of men and women. Contrasting the continental conservative German welfare state with the liberal market economy of the UK, the focus of analyses rests on how welfare state alignment affects fertility rationales in the context of either promising or bleak occupational prospects. The results based on data ...

Sparmotive von jungen, mittelalten und älteren Erwachsenen: erste Ergebnisse eines neuen Inventars zur Erfassung lebenslaufbezogener Sparmotive

There is some research on personal reasons for saving money in the economic sciences. However, not much is known about the age differences of saving motives. In this vein, the future time perspective (FTP) is known to play a critical role for motivation across the life span. In this study, we introduce a new Saving Motive Inventory (SMI), which also covers saving goals after retirement. Furthermore, ...