TY - RPRT A1 - Bachelet, Marion A1 - Kalkuhl, Matthias A1 - Koch, Nicolas T1 - What if working from home will stick? BT - Distributional and climate impacts for Germany T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic created the largest experiment in working from home. We study how persistent telework may change energy and transport consumption and costs in Germany to assess the distributional and environmental implications when working from home will stick. Based on data from the German Microcensus and available classifications of working-from-home feasibility for different occupations, we calculate the change in energy consumption and travel to work when 15% of employees work full time from home. Our findings suggest that telework translates into an annual increase in heating energy expenditure of 110 euros per worker and a decrease in transport expenditure of 840 euros per worker. All income groups would gain from telework but high-income workers gain twice as much as low-income workers. The value of time saving is between 1.3 and 6 times greater than the savings from reduced travel costs and almost 9 times higher for high-income workers than low-income workers. The direct effects on CO₂ emissions due to reduced car commuting amount to 4.5 millions tons of CO₂, representing around 3 percent of carbon emissions in the transport sector. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 41 KW - commuting KW - home office KW - COVID-19 KW - energy expenditure KW - carbon emissions Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-532384 SN - 2628-653X IS - 41 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Andres, Maximilian A1 - Bruttel, Lisa Verena A1 - Friedrichsen, Jana T1 - How communication makes the difference between a cartel and tacit collusion BT - a machine learning approach T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - This paper sheds new light on the role of communication for cartel formation. Using machine learning to evaluate free-form chat communication among firms in a laboratory experiment, we identify typical communication patterns for both explicit cartel formation and indirect attempts to collude tacitly. We document that firms are less likely to communicate explicitly about price fixing and more likely to use indirect messages when sanctioning institutions are present. This effect of sanctions on communication reinforces the direct cartel-deterring effect of sanctions as collusion is more difficult to reach and sustain without an explicit agreement. Indirect messages have no, or even a negative, effect on prices. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 53 KW - cartel KW - collusion KW - communication KW - machine learning KW - experiment Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562234 SN - 2628-653X ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Amoroso, Sara A1 - Herrmann, Benedikt A1 - Kritikos, Alexander T1 - The Role of Regulation and Regional Government Quality for High Growth Firms BT - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - High growth firms (HGFs) are important for job creation and considered to be precursors of economic growth. We investigate how formal institutions, like product- and labor-market regulations, as well as the quality of regional governments that implement these regulations, affect HGF development across European regions. Using data from Eurostat, OECD, WEF, and Gothenburg University, we show that both regulatory stringency and the quality of the regional government influence the regional shares of HGFs. More importantly, we find that the effect of labor- and product-market regulations ultimately depends on the quality of regional governments: in regions with high quality of government, the share of HGFs is neither affected by the level of product market regulation, nor by more or less flexibility in hiring and firing practices. Our findings contribute to the debate on the effects of regulations by showing that regulations are not, per se, “good, bad, and ugly”, rather their impact depends on the efficiency of regional governments. Our paper offers important building blocks to develop tailored policy measures that may influence the development of HGFs in a region. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 71 KW - High growth firms KW - Regulation KW - Quality of regional governments KW - Regions Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-612771 SN - 2628-653X IS - 71 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Amann, Erwin A1 - Rzepka, Sylvi T1 - The Effect of Goal-Setting Prompts in a Blended Learning Environment BT - Evidence from a Field Experiment T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We investigate how inviting students to set task-based goals affects usage of an online learning platform and course performance. We design and implement a randomized field experiment in a large mandatory economics course with blended learning elements. The low-cost treatment induces students to use the online learning system more often, more intensively, and to begin earlier with exam preparation. Treated students perform better in the course than the control group: they are 18.8% (0.20 SD) more likely to pass the exam and earn 6.7% (0.19 SD) more points on the exam. There is no evidence that treated students spend significantly more time, rather they tend to shift to more productive learning methods. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that higher treatment effects are associated with higher levels of behavioral bias but also with poor early course behavior. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 25 KW - natural field experiment KW - blended learning KW - behavioral economics KW - goal-setting Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-493476 SN - 2628-653X N1 - The trial is registered in the AEA RCT registry, RCT ID AEARCTR-28790 (https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2928-1.0). IS - 25 ER -