External refereed essays

Industrial Demand Response: How Network Tariffs and Regulation (Do Not) Impact Flexibility Provision in Electricity Markets and Reserves

Incentives for industrial loads to provide demand response on day-ahead and reserve markets are affected both by network tariffs, as well as regulations on the provision of flexibility in different markets. This paper uses a numerical model of the chlor-alkali process with a storable intermediate good to investigate how these factors affect the provision of demand response in these markets. We also ...

Inference in Partially Identified Heteroskedastic Simultaneous Equations Models

Identification through heteroskedasticity in heteroskedastic simultaneous equations models (HSEMs) is considered. The possibility that heteroskedasticity identifies structural parameters only partially is explicitly allowed for. The asymptotic properties of the identified parameters are derived. Moreover, tests for identification through heteroskedasticity are developed and their asymptotic distributions ...

Education Differences in Women’s Body Weight Trajectories: The Role of Motherhood

Studies have found that education differences in women’s body weight increase until middle adulthood. The explanatory mechanisms behind this increase are not well-understood. This study examined the role of education differences in the prevalence of motherhood as a risk factor for weight gain and in vulnerability to its effects on weight gain. We used longitudinal data from the German Socio-economic ...

Die Bedeutung von Mieteinkommen und Immobilien für die Ungleichheit in Deutschland

Immobilien haben an Bedeutung für die Einkommensungleichheit in Deutschland gewonnen. Der Anteil von Haushalten mit Einkommen aus Vermietung und Verpachtung hat zwischen 2002 und 2017 zugenommen. Mieteinkommen erklären einen wachsenden Anteil der Einkommensungleichheit in Deutschland. Veränderungen der Vermögensungleichheit werden hauptsächlich durch Kapitalgewinne aus Wohnungs- und Aktienkursen sowie ...

Web-Based and Mixed-Mode Cognitive Large-Scale Assessments in Higher Education: An Evaluation of Selection Bias, Measurement Bias, and Prediction Bias

Educational large-scale studies typically adopt highly standardized settings to collect cognitive data on large samples of respondents. Increasing costs alongside dwindling response rates in these studies necessitate exploring alternative assessment strategies such as unsupervised web-based testing. Before respective assessment modes can be implemented on a broad scale, their impact on cognitive measurements ...

Sustainable Development and Populism

All 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), following the guiding principle to leave no one behind. At the same time, rising populist movements increasingly influence the political debate in many countries by challenging multilateral cooperation and liberal democracy. This paper contains the first empirical study of the relationship between the SDGs and ...

Is Healthy Neuroticism Associated with Chronic Conditions? A Coordinated Integrative Data Analysis

Current literature suggests that neuroticism is positively associated with maladaptive life choices, likelihood of disease, and mortality. However, recent research has identified circumstances under which neuroticism is associated with positive outcomes. The current project examined whether “healthy neuroticism”, defined as the interaction of neuroticism and conscientiousness, was associated with the ...

Mortality by Education, Occupational Class and Income in Finland in the 1990s and 2000s

Differences in mortality by socio-economic position (SEP) are well established, but there is uncertainty as to which dimension of SEP is most important in what context. This study compares the relationship between three SEP dimensions and mortality in Finland, during the periods 1990–97 and 2000–07, and to existing results for Sweden. We use an 11% random sample from the Finnish population with information ...

Labor Market and Distributional Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age

We evaluate the labor market and distributional effects of an increase in the early retirement age (ERA) from 60 to 63 for women born after 1951. We use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the strong increase in the ERA between women born in 1951 and 1952. The analysis is based on the German microcensus which includes about 370,000 households per year. We focus on heterogeneous labor market ...

The Well-Being Benefits of Person-Culture Match Are Contingent on Basic Personality Traits

People enjoy well-being benefits if their personal characteristics match those of their culture. This person-culture match effect is integral to many psychological theories and—as a driver of migration—carries much societal relevance. But do people differ in the degree to which person-culture match confers well-being benefits? In the first-ever empirical test of that question, we examined whether the ...

How Consumers Trade Off Supply Security and Green Electricity: Evidence from Germany and Great Britain

The expansion of renewable energies requires infrastructure investments to at least maintain the stability of electricity grids. Using survey data from residential consumers in Germany and Great Britain, we infer in pecuniary terms the extent to which people are prepared to reward the presence of renewable resources in electricity production and how they trade off this change in the fuel mix against ...

Impact of COVID-19 Measures on Short-Term Electricity Consumption in the Most Affected EU Countries and USA States

As COVID-19 spreads worldwide, governments have been implementing a wide range of measures to contain it, from movement restrictions to economy-wide shutdowns. Understanding their impacts is essential to support better policies for countries still experiencing outbreaks or in case of emergence of subsequent pandemic waves. Here we show that the cumulative decline in electricity consumption within the ...

The Political Economy of Coal in Poland: Drivers and Barriers for a Shift away from Fossil Fuels

Poland is the largest hard coal and second largest lignite producer in the EU, generating around 80 percent of its electricity from coal. Resistance to a reduction in coal production and consumption comes from various actors, namely, coal corporations, unions, parts of civil society and the government – as well as their coalitions. Their opposition centres around the prospect of losing their business, ...

Analysing Effects of Birth Order on Intelligence, Educational Attainment, Big Five, and Risk Aversion in an Indonesian Sample

Few studies have examined birth order effects on personality in countries that are not Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD). However, theories have generally suggested that interculturally universal family dynamics are the mechanism behind birth order effects, and prominent theories such as resource dilutionwould predict even stronger linear effects in poorer countries. Here, ...

Parental Wealth and Children's Cognitive Ability, Mental, and Physical Health: Evidence from the UK Millenium Cohort Study

This article investigates the influence of wealth, a frequently neglected aspect of the economic circumstances of families, on children’s development. Using the UK Millennium Cohort Study, it explores whether parental wealth (net total wealth, net housing wealth, net financial wealth, and house value) is associated with children’s cognitive ability, mental, and physical health at age 11 (N = 8,645), ...

Akzeptanz von assistiven Robotern im Pflege- und Gesundheitsbereich: Repräsentative Daten zeichnen ein klares Bild für Deutschland

Angesichts der Alterung der Gesellschaft und der hohen Kosten für die Unterstützung und Pflege in privaten Haushalten stellt sich die Frage, welche Rolle assistive Roboter spielen können. Dieser Beitrag richtet sich auf die Frage, inwieweit Roboter in der Pflege heute von der erwachsenen Bevölkerung in Deutschland akzeptiert werden. Und inwieweit beeinflussen Geschlecht, Alter und Erfahrung (beruflich, ...

How People Know Their Risk Preference

People differ in their willingness to take risks. Recent work found that revealed preference tasks (e.g., laboratory lotteries)—a dominant class of measures—are outperformed by survey-based stated preferences, which are more stable and predict real-world risk taking across different domains. How can stated preferences, often criticised as inconsequential “cheap talk,” be more valid and predictive ...

The Effects of a Parenting Program on Maternal Well-Being: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

This paper evaluates how a light-touch parenting program for parents of children below school entry age affects maternal family well-being. We analyze data from a randomized controlled trial focusing on non-disadvantaged parents. Overall, results show no short-term effects but a relatively large positive effect of the intervention on maternal family well-being in the medium term. With a 20- to 30-percent ...

Abuse of Dominance and Antitrust Enforcement in the German Electricity Market

Gender and Changes in Household Wealth after the Dissolution of Marriage and Cohabitation in Germany

Objective: To document how changes in household wealth following the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation differ by gender in Germany.Background: Marital property regimes usually prescribe that both partners receive a share of the couple's wealth following a divorce. The dissolution of cohabiting unions is not governed by marital property regimes in most countries, including Germany. Because men, ...