External refereed essays

Zur Rolle von Forschungsdatenzentren beim Management von publikationsbezogenen Forschungsdaten: Ergebnisse einer Befragung von wissenschaftlichen Infrastrukturdienstleistern im Bereich der Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften

Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse einer Analyse zusammengefasst, in der untersucht wurde, ob, und wenn ja welche Services für das Management von publikationsbezogenen Forschungsdaten gegenwärtig bei wissenschaftlichen Infrastrukturdienstleistern in den Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften bestehen. Die Analyse wurde Mithilfe von Desktop-Research sowie einer Online-Befragung, an der sich ...

Regulation of Pharmaceutical Prices: Evidence from a Reference Price Reform in Denmark

Reference price systems for prescription drugs constitute widely adopted cost containment tools. Under these regimes, patients co-pay a fraction of the difference between a drug's pharmacy retail price and a reference price that is set by the government. Reference prices are either externally (based on drug prices in other countries) or internally (based on domestic drug prices) determined. We study ...

Belief Precision and Effort Incentives in Promotion Contests

The career concerns literature predicts that incentives for effort decline as beliefs about ability become more precise (Holmström, 1982, 1999). In contrast, we show that effort can increase with belief precision when agents compete for promotions to better paid jobs that are assigned on the basis of perceived abilities. In this case, an intermediate level of precision provides the strongest incentive ...

Future Public Pensions and Changing Employment Patterns across Birth Cohorts

We analyse the impacts of changing employment patterns and pension reforms on the future level of public pensions across birth cohorts in Germany. The analysis is based on a microsimulation model and a rich data set that combines household survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and process-produced microdata from the German pension insurance. We account for cohort effects in ...

On Distributive Effects of Optimal Regulation for Power Grid Expansion

To date, the distributive implications of incentive regulation on electricity transmission networks have not been explicitly studied in the literature. More specifically, the parameters that a regulator might use to achieve distributive efficiency under price-cap regulation have not yet been identified. To discern these parameters is the motivation for the research presented in this paper. We study ...

Is Sequential Estimation a Suitable Second Best for the Estimation of Hybrid Choice Models?

The simultaneous estimation method has overtaken the sequential approach as the preferred estimation method for hybrid discrete choice models. Notwithstanding, the computational cost of the simultaneous estimation can be prohibitive when models become more involved, and in such cases sequential estimation can still be a potent option. In previous work a theoretical analysis was conducted that led to ...

Verkehrssicherheit und Zahlungsbereitschaft - ein Überblick zum Stand der Forschung

Familien in Deutschland - FiD

Chinese Renewable Energy Technology Exports: The Role of Policy, Innovation and Markets

Chinese companies have become major technology producers, with the largest shares 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 ...

Parents Transmit Happiness along with Associated Values and Behaviors to Their Children: A Lifelong Happiness Dividend?

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for ‘children’ who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of values and behaviors known to be associated with happiness (Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107(42):17922–17926, ...

Noise Expectations and House Prices: The Reaction of Property Prices to an Airport Expansion

We examine the effects of an airport expansion on the prices of houses and apartments located under the planned flight paths. We focus on the role of expectations of aircraft noise during the expansion of Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport. The publication of the flight paths can be seen as an exogenous event. It provides local residents and potential home buyers with reliable information in ...

Compliance with the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative and Impact on Breastfeeding Rates

Objectives: To examine compliance with the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) as well as evaluate the BFHI and its components on breastfeeding initiation and duration overall and according to maternal education level. . - Design: Quasi-experimental study using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) from 2004 to 2008. . - Setting: Birth facilities in Maine. . - Participants: ...

Cross-Border Mergers and Domestic-Firm Wages: Integrating "Spillover Effects" and "Bargaining Effects"

Two literatures exist concerning cross-border merger activity's impact on domestic wages: one focusing on positive spillover effects; the other focusing on negative bargaining effects.Motivated by scarce theoretical scholarship spanning these literatures, we nest both mechanisms in a single conceptual framework. Considering the separate phenomena of inward and outward cross-border merger activity, ...

M&A and R&D: Asymmetric Effects on Acquirers and Targets?

Start-up Competitions as an Instrument of Entrepreneurship Policy: The German Experience

The number of aspiring entrepreneurs in high-tech industries who successfully complete the transition from a nascent start-up project towards an operational new venture is comparatively low in Germany. Since the mid-1990s, policy-makers have initiated numerous start-up competitions (SUCs or business plan competitions) to facilitate this important step in the venture creation process. SUCs have two ...

Myopic Governments and Welfare-Enhancing Debt Limits

This paper studies welfare effects of a soft borrowing constraint on sovereign debt. The constraint is modeled as a proportional fine per unit of debt in excess of a specified reference value, resembling features of the Stability and Growth Pact. Sovereign debt is the result of myopic fiscal policy. It reduces welfare in the absence of lump-sum taxes. The paper shows that the borrowing constraint enhances ...

A Retrospective Merger Analysis in the U.K. Videogame Market

We study the effect of a merger in a dynamic high-technology industry—the videogame market—which is characterized by the frequent introduction of new products. To assess the impact of the merger between two large specialist retailers in the United Kingdom—Game Group PLC and Games Station Limited—we perform a difference-in-differences analysis comparing the price evolution of the merging parties with ...

Regional Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Biotech Industry: Exploring the Transition from Award-Winning Nascent Entrepreneurs to Real Start-Ups

Knowledge of factors that determine the transition from nascent entrepreneurship to real entrepreneurship is of major importance for policies aiming to stimulate start-ups effectively. Scholars have concentrated mainly on person-specific factors to explain transition probabilities, and environmental characteristics have been relatively neglected. Given that entrepreneurship is a strongly localized ...

Empirical Welfare Analysis with Preference Heterogeneity

We apply recently proposed individual welfare measures in the context of preference heterogeneity, derived from structural labour supply models. Contrary to the standard practice of using reference preferences and wages, these measures preserve preference heterogeneity in the normative step of the analysis. They also make the ethical priors, implicit in any interpersonal comparison, more explicit. ...

Unemployment and Portfolio Choice: Does Persistence Matter?

Households can rely on private savings or on public unemployment insurance to hedge against the risk of becoming unemployed. These hedging mechanisms are used differently across countries. In this paper, we use a life cycle model to study the effects of unemployment on the portfolio choice of households in the US and in Germany. We distinguish short- and long-term unemployment and find that, in case ...