External refereed essays

The EU Internal Electricity Market: Done Forever?

Taking a quarter-century to build Europe's internal market for electricity may seem an incredibly long journey. The aim of achieving a Europe-wide market might be reached, but it has involved – and continues to involve – a process subject to many adverse dynamics. The EU internal market may derail greatly in the coming years from the effects of a massive push for renewables, as well as a growing decentralization ...

Der Einfluss von Persönlichkeitseigenschaften auf die Kooperationsbereitschaft in Umfragen: befunde der Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften 2004, 2006 und 2008

Gemäß der Social Isolation Hypothesis ist davon auszugehen, dass sozial isolierte Personen weniger bereit sind an Umfragen teilzunehmen. Auf dieser Grundlage wird argumentiert, dass vor allem subjektiv empfundene soziale Isolation, wie sie im psychologischen Konzept von Einsamkeit berücksichtigt wird, die Teilnahmebereitschaft in Umfragen beeinflusst und dass Einsamkeit von Persönlichkeitseigenschaften ...

Is Car Drivers' Response to Congestion Charging Schemes Based on the Correct Perception of Price Signals?

This paper deals with the question of whether the capability of car drivers to estimate the cost of a new hypothetical, highly differentiated congestion charge influences their decision to change travel behaviour. The analysis makes use of an integrated choice and latent variable model (ICLV) which merges classic choice models with the structural equation approach (SEM) for latent variables. This hybrid ...

An Input-Output Table for Germany in 1936: A Documentation of Results, Sources and Research Strategy

In the following, we present the earliest input-output table for Germany: It covers 40 economic branches, five final demand categories and five primary inputs. The symmetric table for 1936 is completely based on original statistical data and does not rely on separate supply and use tables. The core of our endeavour is based on the German industrial census of 1936. Originally, this census and its forerunner ...

A Strategic Energy Technology Policy towards 2050: No-Regret Strategies for European Technology Pussh

As current policy frameworks are expiring soon, the EU is revisiting its energy technology policy for the post-2020 horizon. The main long-run objective for energy technology policy is to foster the achievement of ambitious EU goals for decarbonisation. We discuss how European energy technology policy towards 2050 can be effective despite: 1) uncertain carbon prices; 2) uncertain technological change; ...

The Effect of the Business Cycle on Apprenticeship Training: Evidence from Germany

The benefits of dual apprenticeship programs are usually discussed in the context of reducing structural unemployment rates, especially among the young. Related to this, the long-run benefits of dual apprenticeship programs are extensively analyzed in the literature. However, empirical evidence regarding the short-run effects of the business cycle on the number of apprenticeships is scarce. In this ...

The Economic Effects of a Central Bank Reacting to House Price Inflation

What are the economic effects of a central bank that takes the evolution of house prices into account? In an attempt to answer this question, we use a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a housing sector to explore the economic impacts of a central bank reacting to house price inflation. We examine this in the context of two different shocks that are associated with two ...

On the Relevance of Exports for Regional Output Growth in China

Despite high economic growth during the past decades, China is still vulnerable to shocks arising from industrial states. The advanced economies strongly influence Chinese export performance, with subsequent effects on output growth. Using a production function, this article examines to which extent regional GDP growth in China is export driven. In a panel of 28 Chinese provinces, series are splitted ...

Welfare Effects of a Shift of Joint to Individual Taxation in the German Personal Income Tax

We empirically derive the welfare effects of a shift from joint to individual taxation of married households in Germany. For the welfare evaluation we estimate the preference heterogeneity and use normative welfare concepts proposed by Fleurbaey (2006) to address the difficulties of comparison between and aggregation of heterogeneous agents. Our results suggest that the normative choice of the welfare ...

Structural Vector Autoregressions: Checking Identifying Long-Run Restrictions via Heteroskedasticity

Long-run restrictions have been used extensively for identifying structural shocks in vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis. Such restrictions are typically just-identifying but can be checked by utilizing changes in volatility. This paper reviews and contrasts the volatility models that have been used for this purpose. Three main approaches have been used, exogenously generated changes in the unconditional ...

Risks and Returns to Educational Fields: A Financial Asset Approach to Vocational and Academic Education

Applying a financial assets approach, we analyze the returns and earnings risk of investments into different types of human capital. Even though the returns from investing in human capital are extensively studied, little is known about the properties of the returns to different types of human capital within a given educational path. Using information from the German Micro Census, we estimate the risk ...

Basil J. Moore's Horizontalists and Verticalists: An Appraisal 25 Years Later

In 1988 Basil Moore published his book Horizontalists and Verticalists: The Macroeconomics of Credit Money, which this year celebrates its 25th birthday. We discuss this book from today's perspective, and in particular whether Moore's main assertions have been validated or rejected by the development of central bank practice and academic monetary economics. We find that the book has impressively stood ...

Log versus Level in VAR Forecasting: 42 Million Empirical Answers - Expect the Unexpected

The use of log-transformed data has become standard in macroeconomic forecasting with VAR models. However, its appropriateness in the context of out-of-sample forecasts has not yet been exposed to a thorough empirical investigation. With the aim of filling this void, a broad sample of VAR models is employed in a multi-country set up and approximately 42 million pseudo-out-of-sample forecasts of GDP ...

How Learning a Musical Instrument Affects the Development of Skills

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the effects of extracurricular music activities on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time use and ambition using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our findings suggest that adolescents ...

Dealing with Uncertainty: The Illusion of Knowledge in the Study of Counterterrorism Effectiveness

Efforts to combat terrorism have become a priority in the security agenda of most countries around the world, while the respective policies, tools and instruments have amounted to significant costs. In this article, we review the literature on counterterrorism (CT) effectiveness and draw a series of rather negative conclusions with regard to the reliability of our knowledge in this area. We find that ...

Ein Überblick zu methodischen Fragen der Wegekostenrechnung

Bewertung der Angebotsmerkmale des Personenfernverkehrs vor dem Hintergrund der Liberalisierung des Fernbusmarktes

Cross-Border Banking, Bank Market Structures and Market Power: Theory and Cross-Country Evidence

Patterns in cross-border banking have changed since the global financial crisis. This may affect domestic bank market structures and macroeconomic stability in the longer term. In this study, I theoretically and empirically analyze how different modes of cross-border banking impact bank concentration and market power. I use a two-country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks developed ...

Global Warming, Technological Change and Trade in Carbon Energy: Challenge or Threat?

Is it possible to combat global climate change through North-to-South technology transfer even without a global climate treaty? Or do carbon leakage and the rebound effect imply that it is possible to take advantage of technological improvements under the umbrella of a global arrangement only? For answering these questions two possible states of the world are discussed: one, where more energy efficient ...

Two New Datasets on South-North Migration by Occupational Category

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to break down south-north migration along both the skill and the occupational dimension and thus to distinguish and compare several types of south-north migration and brain drain. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents south-north migration rates by occupational category at two distinct levels of disaggregation according to International Standard Classification ...