External refereed essays

Infant Mortality and Adult Stature in Spain

This paper presents new evidence concerning the relationship between environmental conditions in the year of birth (as reflected in the infant mortality rate (IMR) and gross domestic product per capita) and adult health (adult height). We perform an analysis across Spanish regions for cohorts born between 1961 and 1980, a period when the country underwent a socio-economic and political transformation. ...

Natural Hazard Insurance in Europe: Tailored Responses to Climate Change Are Needed

This paper provides an overview of the existing systems of natural hazard insurance in Europe, their structural characteristics and peculiarities. It also discusses the difficulties of adaptation of these systems to climate change and the growing number of natural disasters. Using Germany, Austria and Switzerland as examples, the paper demonstrates that based on the status quo, the Swiss monopoly insurance ...

Introduction to a Special Issue: The Internationalisation of Services - Evidence from Micro Data

Comparability of EU-SILC Survey and Register Data: The Relationship among Employment, Earnings and Poverty

The Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) provide an up-to-date data source for the comparative analysis of income, material deprivation and poverty. At the European Union (EU) level, these data have become a standard source for social reporting. Yet the specific approaches to data collection in EU-SILC vary widely from one country to the next. One of the major differences is that some ...

Changes in Compulsory Schooling and the Causal Effect of Education on Health: Evidence from Germany

In this paper we investigate the causal effect of years of schooling on health and health-related behavior in West Germany. We apply an instrumental variables approach using as natural experiments several changes in compulsory schooling laws between 1949 and 1969. These law changes generate exogenous variation in years of schooling both across states and over time. We find evidence for a strong and ...

Spillovers of Institutional Change in Africa

While previous research has looked at the determinants of the quality of institutions, not much research has been done that looks at the determinants of institutional change. This paper examines what determines the probability of an improvement in political freedoms. Several path-dependent variables, such as the history of political freedom, are clearly influential. In addition to that, economic openness ...

Virtual Life Satisfaction

We study life satisfaction data from the 2005 World Values Survey and a 2009 survey of users of the virtual world Second Life. Second Life users do not have the same demographic profile as the general population, but the differences are not as large as we expected. The mechanisms and causes of life satisfaction seem to be similar in the two samples. Among Second Life users, satisfaction with their ...

Holding a Candle to Innovation in Concentrating Solar Power Technologies: A Study Drawing on Patent Data

Improved understanding of the innovative pathways of renewable energy technologies is vital if we are to make the transition to a low carbon economy. This study presents new evidence on innovation and industry dynamics in concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies. Though CSP is undergoing a renaissance, existing innovation studies have explored innovative activity in solar technologies in general, ...

Erwerbskarrieren in Ostdeutschland - 20 Jahre nach der Deutschen Einheit und darüber hinaus

Die Arbeitslosigkeit in Ostdeutschland bewegt sich seit Jahren auf einem doppelt so hohen Niveau wie in Westdeutschland bei gleichzeitigem Rückgang der sozialversicherungspflichtigen Beschäftigung. Wir analysieren diese Entwicklungen für einzelne Geburtskohorten der Jahrgänge 1937-1971. Dazu schätzen wir auf der Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) für Männer und Frauen differenziert nach Bildungsgruppen ...

Trade Creation and the Status of FTAs: Empirical Evidence from East Asia

East Asia has been considered a latecomer with respect to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Since the turn of the last century, however, FTAs with East Asian participation have seen an intra- and extra-regional expansion. Many trade initiatives have been proposed, negotiated or even implemented. This introduces interesting perspectives for the analysis of trade agreements regarding their anticipatory trade ...

Regional Differences of Production and Efficiency of Mexican Manufacturing: An Application of Nested and Stochastic Frontier Panel Models

This study examines the regional divide for Mexican manufacturing. Mexico's north-south disparity is widely noted, but rarely analyzed empirically and at detailed regional level. We use a panel of municipality-level data to estimate regional production functions. An important contribution is the application of nested panel and stochastic frontier models to capture latent regional characteristics and ...

The Globalization of Steam Coal Markets and the Role of Logistics: An Empirical Analysis

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive multivariate cointegration analysis of three parts of the steam coal value chain - export, transport and import prices. The analysis is based on a rich dataset of international coal prices; in particular, we combine data on steam coal prices with freight rates, covering the period December 2001 until August 2009 at weekly frequency. We then test whether the ...

Unobserved Heterogeneity and Efficiency Measurement in Public Transport

Efficiency measurement in public transport requires an adequate account of unobserved network characteristics that are typically modelled as factors separable from the production process. This paper proposes a panel data model that allows for non-separable firm-specific heterogeneity in an input distance function. The proposed model is applied to a sample of German and Swiss urban transit companies ...

R&D Efficiency and Barriers to Entry: A Two Stage Semi-Parametric DEA Approach

This paper assesses the relative efficiency of knowledge production in the OECD using a nonparametric DEA approach. In general, resources allocated to R&D are limited and therefore must be used efficiently, given the institutional and legal constraints. The efficiency scores presented are based on an intertemporal frontier estimation for the period 1995 to 2004. We analyse the impact of the regulatory ...

Growth Accelerations Revisited

Hausmann, Pritchett, and Rodrik (2005) found that political regime changes, external shocks and economic reforms are statistically significant predictors of growth accelerations. Updating the data from 1992 up to 2000 and correcting for coding errors, this paper argues that the original results are fragile upon changes in period, sample, measures, and inclusion of controls. All the data are provided ...

Short Assessment of the Big Five: Robust across Survey Methods Except Telephone Interviewing

We examined measurement invariance and age-related robustness of a short 15-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-S) of personality dimensions, which is well suited for applications in large-scale multidisciplinary surveys. The BFI-S was assessed in three different interviewing conditions: computer-assisted or paper-assisted face-to-face interviewing, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, and a self-administered ...

Gender Differences in Entrepreneurial Choice and Risk Aversion: A Decomposition Based on a Microeconometric Model

Why are female entrepreneurs so rare? In Germany, women exhibit both a lower entry rate into and higher exit rate from self-employment. To explain this gender gap, this study estimates a structural microeconometric model of transition rates that includes a standard risk aversion parameter. Inputs into the model are the expected value and variance of earnings from self-employment and dependent employment, ...

The External Financing of Emerging Markets: Evidence from Two Waves of Financial Globalization

What determines the yields at which international investors are willing to lend to emerging market countries, and the amounts of such lending? We analyze the motivation underlying investors' choices in allocating their holdings across countries, through regressions for both prices (bond yields) and quantities (bond market capitalization or stocks of external liabilities) estimated during two waves ...

Is the Boone-Indicator Applicable? Evidence from a Combined Data Set of German Manufacturing Enterprises

Boone (2008a) proposes a new competition measure based on Relative Profit Differences (RPD) that, from its theoretical properties, proves to be more robust than the Lerner-Index. However, the proof of the empirical practicability and robustness of the Boone-Indicator is missing. To fill this gap, we use a rich, newly built, data set for German manufacturing enterprises and test its empirical validity ...

One Last Puff? Public Smoking Bans and Smoking Behavior

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's federal states. We exploit this variation to identify the effect that smoke-free policies had on individuals' smoking propensity and smoking intensity. Using rich longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic ...