External refereed essays

The Effects of Uncertainty on the Leverage of Non-Financial Firms

This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of nonfinancial firms' short-term leverage and macroeconomic and idiosyncratic sources of uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts a negative relationship between uncertainty and optimal levels of borrowing. This proposition is tested using a panel of nonfinancial U.S. firms drawn from ...

Uncertainty Determinants of Corporate Liquidity

This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of non-financial firms' liquid assets and uncertainty. We develop a partial equilibrium model of precautionary demand for liquid assets showing that firms alter their liquidity ratio in response to changes in either macroeconomic or idiosyneratic uncertainty. We test this hypothesis using a panel of non-financial US firms drawn from the COMPUSTAT ...

Uncertainty Determinants of Firm Investment

We investigate the impact of measures of uncertainty on firms' capital investment behavior using a panel of U.S. firms. Increases in firm-specific and CAPM-based measures have a significant negative effect on investment spending, while market-based uncertainty has a positive impact

Economic Growth of Agglomerations and Geographic Concentration of Industries: Evidence for West Germany

During the two decades between 1980 and 2000, there was no clear overall trend of economic convergence or divergence among West German regions. However, a number of regions that were already rich - generally large agglomerations - had succeeded in further distancing themselves from the rest. At the same time, knowledge-intensive services are identified as industries whose geographical concentration ...

Firm Wage Differentiation in Eastern Germany: A Non-parametric Analysis of the Wage Spread

In Eastern Germany, wage differentiation between firms has clearly grown, parallel to individual wage differentials. Nevertheless, the wage spread between firms is still much less than in Western Germany. In this paper, a non-parametric decomposition is used to analyze the difference between the wages spread in the two parts of Germany. Only part of the difference can be explained by different economic ...

The Influence of Environment and Personality on the Affective and Cognitive Component of Subjective Well-Being

Subjective well-being (SWB) has two components: affective well-being (AWB) and cognitive well-being (CWB). The present study demonstrated that AWB and CWB have are influenced by different factors in a nationally representative sample in Germany (N = 1053). Neuroticism was a stronger predictor of AWB than CWB. Unemployment and regional differences between the East and West of Germany were stronger predictors ...

Subjective Well-being among Young People in Transition to Adulthood

This study used a nationally representative sample of young people in Germany from the German Socio-Economic Panel to examine how demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the young persons and their parents, personality traits of the young persons, quality and quantity of relationships, the parent's level of life satisfaction, and other measures of satisfaction for the young person are related ...

Acceptability of the German Charging Scheme for Heavy Goods Vehicles: Empirical Evidence from a Freight Company Survey

While several European and national studies have dealt with the acceptability of road pricing schemes for passenger transport, only sparse research is available on this issue for freight transport. Against this background, the paper deals with the acceptability of the German road user-charging scheme for heavy goods vehicles by the road haulage industry. It presents the findings of an internet-based ...

Outward FDI and Domestic Investment in Two Industrialized Countries

Using cointegration techniques, we find that in the US, outward FDI has positive long-run effects on domestic investment. In Germany, this complementary relationship exists only in the short run. In the long run, outward FDI substitutes for German domestic investment.

Effects of Tariffication: Tariffs and Quotas under Monopolistic Competition

Recent rounds of GATT and later WTO have advocated widespread tariffication, meaning that existing non-tariff barriers be converted into import equivalent tariffs. From an economic point of view, the effects of such tariffication are not entirely clear. The paper presents a trade model with monopolistic competition to examine the welfare effects of tariffication. The ranking of pre- and post-tariffication ...

A Strategic Model of European Gas Supply (GASMOD)

This paper presents a model of the European natural gas supply, GASMOD, which is structured as a two-stage-game of successive natural gas exports to Europe (upstream market) and wholesale trade within Europe (downstream market) and which explicitly includes infrastructure capacities. We compare three possible market scenarios: Cournot competition in both markets, perfect competition in both markets, ...

Native-Migrant Differences in Risk Attitudes

This article questions the perceived wisdom that migrants are more risk-loving than the native population. We employ a new large German survey of direct individual risk measures to find that first-generation migrants have lower risk attitudes than natives, which only equalize in the second generation.

Beitragssatz, Kassenwettbewerb und Gesundheitsreform: eine empirische Analyse

The premium rates paid for statutory health insurance in Germany play a key role in the competition among health care funds. With the most recent health care reform (GKV-Wettbewerbsstärkungsgesetz GKV-WSG), a range of new products have been introduced that could erode the advantageous selling proposition of the premium rates. In addition to the pure monetary incentive to change health insurance provider, ...

Human Capital and Ethnic Self-Identification of Immigrants

The paper investigates the role of human capital on immigrants' ethnic ties towards their home and host countries. Pre-migration characteristics dominate ethnic self-identification. Human capital acquired in the host country does not affect the attachment to the receiving country

Die Wettbewerbsanalyse von Nachfragemacht aus verhandlungstheoretischer Sicht

Efficiency Analysis of East and West German Electricity Distribution Companies: Do the "Ossis" Really Beat the "Wessis"?

External Debt in Post-Conflict Countries

In the development literature, there exists no systematic study of external borrowing in post-conflict countries. We address this gap by analyzing statistical and case study evidence from three African countries. We find that many war-affected countries face rising debt arrears and deteriorating relations with creditors. Rebuilding trust between lenders and borrowers is hence a crucial but often slow ...

Diversifizierungsstrategien deutscher Unternehmen: Auswertung eines Producer-Product-Panels der amtlichen Statistik

Unternehmen und Arbeitsmarkt in Bewegung: was gewinnt die Forschung durch amtliche Mikrodaten?

Using the Gravity Equation to Differentiate among Alternative Theories of Trade: Another Look

This study compares two alternative approaches - the traditional ordinary least square (OLS) and the Poisson Quasi Maximum Likelihood (PQML) procedures - to estimation of the home market effects for the heterogeneous, the reference priced and the homogeneous goods in the gravity model derived in Feenstra et al. (2001). Despite our findings that the PQML estimation results oftentimes (significantly) ...