Externe referierte Aufsätze

Representing GASPEC with the World Gas Model

This paper presents results of simulating a more collusive behavior of a group of natural gas producing and exporting countries, sometimes called GASPEC. We use the World Gas Model, a dynamic, strategic representation of world gas production, trade, and consumption between 2005 and 2030. In particular, we simulate a closer cooperation of the GASPEC countries when exporting pipeline gas and liquefied ...

Estimating the Marginal Costs of Airport Operation Using Multivariate Time Series Models with Correlated Error Terms

This paper explores insights about marginal airport costs that can be gained by analysing labour inputs and their variability. Based on hourly cost and traffic data for the airport of Helsinki, a multivariate time series approach is used incorporating correlated error terms to account for random shocks such as delays. We found for most airport services a linear relationship between labour input and ...

Linking Natural Gas Markets - Is LNG Doing Its Job?

The increase in liquefied natural gas trade has accelerated the integration of previously segmented markets in North America, Europe, and Asia. This paper provides evidence on the integration of the transatlantic natural gas market; it thus complements other papers in the EMF 23 study that focus on prices and international natural gas trade. We test the theoretical proposition that in integrating markets ...

Perspectives of the European Natural Gas Markets until 2025

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic several-layer model of European natural gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European country (or region), and final demand. Our model results suggest rather modest changes in the overall ...

Stability and Change of Well Being: An Experimentally Enhanced Latent State-Trait-Error Analysis

This study uses longitudinal panel data and short-term retest data from the same respondents in the German Socio-economic Panel to estimate the contribution of state and trait variance to the reliable variance in judgments of life satisfaction and domain satisfaction. The key finding is that state and trait variance contribute approximately equally to the reliable variance in well being measures. Most ...

The Impact of Child and Maternal Health Indicators on Female Labor Force Participation after Childbirth: Evidence for Germany

This paper analyzes the influence of child health and maternal physical and mental health on female labor force participation after childbirth in Germany. Our analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, which enables us to measure child health based on the occurrence of severe health problems including mental and physical disabilities, hospitalizations, and preterm ...

Obesity and Skill Attainment in Early Childhood

This paper investigates the association between obesity and skill attainment in early childhood (aged 2-3 years). Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to estimate models of developmental functioning in four critical areas (verbal skills, activities of daily living, motor skills, and social skills) as a function of various measures of weight (including body mass index and obesity) ...

A Privacy-Protecting Business-Analytics Service for On-Line Transactions

Analysis of consumer-related and consumer-generated data is a very important way to measure the success of on-line retailing. The software packages for data analysis have two major shortcomings: (1) solutions are not offered as a service reachable by standard procedures over the Internet, but as isolated standalone applications or ERP system modules; (2) privacy restrictions need to be integrated into ...

Immigrants and Social Networks in a Job-Scarce Environment: The Case of Germany

Though information about jobs passed through personal networks has been central to the labor market integration of immigrants in the United States, its role in the economic absorption of immigrants in Germany, where jobs are scarcer and employers more likely to demand formal qualifications, is less clear. Through analysis of German Socio-Economic Panel data, we discovered that nearly half of all immigrant-origin ...

Cognitive Abilities and Earnings: First Evidence for Germany

We provide first evidence on the relationship between cognitive abilities and earnings in Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Study. The estimates suggest that mechanics abilities are positively related to wages of West German workers, even when educational attainment is controlled for. Pragmatics of cognition are not related to earnings. In line with studies for other countries, ...

Does Smoking Really Harm Your Earnings So Much? Biases in Current Estimates of the Smoking Wage Penalty

Empirical studies on the earnings effects of tobacco use have found significant wage penalties attached to smoking. This article produces evidence that suggests that these estimates are significantly upward biased. The bias arises from a general failure in the literature to control for past smoking behaviour of individuals. Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regressions show that the smoking wage penalty ...

Traditional Regulatory Approaches and the Postal Service Market

The Impact of Socio-economics and Climate Change on Tropical Cyclone Losses in the USA

Tropical cyclones that make landfall on the coast of the USA are causing increasing economic losses. It is assumed that the increase in losses is largely due to socio-economic developments, i.e. growing wealth and greater settlement of exposed areas. However, it is also thought that the rise in losses is caused by increasing frequency of severe cyclones resulting from climate change, whether due to ...

Der Emissionshandel in Deutschland und Österreich: ein wirksames Instrument des Klimaschutzes?

In Vino Pecunia? The Association between Beverage-Specific Drinking Behavior and Wages

The positive association between moderate alcohol consumption and wages is well documented in the economic literature. Positive health effects as well as networking mechanisms serve as explanations for the "alcohol-income puzzle". Using individual-based microdata from the SOEP for 2006, we confirm that this relationship exists for Germany as well. More importantly, we shed light on the alcohol-income ...

Advanced Mechanisms for the Promotion of Renewable Energy: Models for the Future Evolution of the German Renewable Energy Act

The German Renewable Energy Act (EEG) has been very successful in promoting the deployment of renewable electricity technologies in Germany. The increasing share of EEG power in the generation portfolio, increasing amounts of fluctuating power generation, and the growing European integration of power markets governed by competition calls for a re-design of the EEG. In particular, a more efficient system ...

Ethnosizing Immigrants

The ethnosizer, a new measure of the intensity of a person's ethnic identity, is proposed using information on language, culture, societal interaction, history of migration, and ethnic self-identification. A two-dimensional version classifies immigrants into four states: integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization. Results based on the German Socio-economic Panel for 2001 are as follows. ...

Indenture as a Self-Enforced Contract Device: An Experimental Test

We experimentally test the efficacy of indenture as a self-enforced contract device. In an indenture game, the principal signals the intention of payment on delivery by tearing a banknote in half and giving the agent one half of it as "prepayment"; the agent receives the completing half after delivering the service. By forward induction, cooperation is incentive-compatibly self-enforcing. The indenture ...

The Effects of Income Taxation on Severance Pay

Severance pay often results from a bargain between the firm and the employee to avoid or terminate a legal conflict. We theoretically investigate how income taxation affects these negotiations. Using panel data from West Germany and exploiting a change in tax law in 1999, we find that a higher income tax on severance pay reduces the probability of obtaining it and - in some specifications - also lowers ...

Life Goals Matter to Happiness: A Revision of Set-Point Theory

The purpose of the paper is to assess the theory that the downside risk insurance provided by more generous welfare states generates long run efficiency gains, which counterbalance the short run efficiency losses caused by work disincentives in these states (Feldstein 1974, 1976; Sinn 1995, 1996). Testing downside risk theory requires long term data, so the paper makes use of the three longest running ...