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Draft Art. 15 CCAH attempts to strike a balance between State autonomy and robust judicial supervision. It largely follows Article 22 CERD conditioning the jurisdiction of the ICJ on prior negotiations. Hence, the substance of the clause is interpreted in light of the Court’s recent case law, especially Georgia v. Russia. Besides, several issues regarding the scope ratione temporis of the compromissory clause are discussed. The article advances several proposals to further improve the current draft, addressing the missing explicit reference to State responsibility, as well as the relationship between the Court and a possible treaty body, It also proposes to recalibrate the interplay of a requirement of prior negotiations respectively the seizing of a future treaty body on the one hand and provisional measures to be indicated by the Court on the other.
From an active labor market policy perspective, start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals are very effective in improving long-term labor market outcomes for participants. From a business perspective, however, the assessment of these public programs is less clear since they might attract individuals with low entrepreneurial abilities and produce businesses with low survival rates and little contribution to job creation, economic growth, and innovation. In this paper, we use a rich data set to compare participants of a German start-up subsidy program for unemployed individuals to a group of regular founders who started from nonunemployment and did not receive the subsidy. The data allows us to analyze their business performance up until 40 months after business formation. We find that formerly subsidized founders lag behind not only in survival and job creation, but especially also in innovation activities. The gaps in these business outcomes are relatively constant or even widening over time. Hence, we do not see any indication of catching up in the longer run. While the gap in survival can be entirely explained by initial differences in observable start-up characteristics, the gap in business development remains and seems to be the result of restricted access to capital as well as differential business strategies and dynamics. Considering these conflicting results for the assessment of the subsidy program from an ALMP and business perspective, policy makers need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of such a strategy to find the right policy mix.
In its Burmych and Others v. Ukraine judgment of October 2017 the European Court of Human Rights has dismissed more than 12.000 applications due to the fact that given that they were not only repetitive in nature, but also mutatis mutandis identical to applications covered by a previous pilot judgment rendered against Ukraine. This raises fundamental issues as to the role of the Court within the human rights protection system established by the ECHR, as well as those concerning the interrelationship between the Court and the Committee of Ministers.
Challenging the Paris Peace Treaties, State Sovereignty, and Western-Dominated International Law
(2018)
The genesis of the jus cogens doctrine in international law for long has been associated with a turn to a more value-laden international law after the Second World War promoted by British rapporteurs in the International Law Commission. This paper builds on this narrative but adds two seemingly contradictory story lines. In the 1920s and 1930s German-speaking international legal scholars like Alfred Verdross developed the concept as a tool to renounce the disliked Paris Peace Treaties in the context of more and more aggressive German revision policies. Furthermore, after 1945 Soviet thinkers of the Khrushchev era used jus cogens to criticize Western economic and military integration, while newly independent states regarded the concept as a promising vehicle for distancing themselves from traditional Western international legal notions in the era of decolonization. Hence, instead of embracing a progress narrative, a dark sides-account or a contributionist reading of the history of international law, this paper highlights the multifaceted origins of the jus cogens doctrine.
Numerous studies investigate which sanctioning institutions prevent cartel formation but little is known as to how these sanctions work. We contribute to understanding the inner workings of cartels by studying experimentally the effect of sanctioning institutions on firms’ communication. Using machine learning to organize the chat communication into topics, we find that firms are significantly less likely to communicate explicitly about price fixing when sanctioning institutions are present. At the same time, average prices are lower when communication is less explicit. A mediation analysis suggests that sanctions are effective in hindering cartel formation not only because they introduce a risk of being fined but also by reducing the prevalence of explicit price communication.
This paper examines the attempts of implement-ing components of the concept called Civiliza-tional Hexagon as a pathway to civilizing conflict in the Sub-Saharan Africa in the post-Cold War period. Despite significant decline in the violent conflict and substantial progress socio-economic aspects in the period, most states in the region have been facing challenges in their way to civilize conflict related to absence of inclusive political system, weak state unable to monopolize the use of violence in its territory, and social injustice. On the other hand, states like Botswana and Mauritius managed to civilize conflict through significant improvement in democratic consolidation. Besides their relative success in implementing six elements, these states enabled to integrate traditional institutions with modern state apparatus that helped them to fill the gap created as result of exogenous state formation process and the resulting unfinished nation-building project. Additionally, traditional institutions contributed to managing diversity.
This paper develops the incentives to collude in a model with spatially separated markets and quantity setting firms. We find that increases in transportation costs stabilize the collusive agreement. We also show that, the higher the demand in both markets the less likely will collusion be sustained. Gross and Holahan (2003) use a similar model with price setting firms, we compare their results with ours to analyze the impact of the mode of competition on sustainability of collusion. Further we analyze the impact of collusion on social welfare and find that collusion may be welfare enhancing.
This paper develops a spatial model to analyze the stability of a market sharing agreement between two firms. We find that the stability of the cartel depends on the relative market size of each firm. Collusion is not attractive for firms with a small home market, but the incentive for collusion increases when the firm’s home market is getting larger relative to the home market of the competitor. The highest stability of a cartel and additionally the highest social welfare is found when regions are symmetric. Further we can show that a monetary transfer can stabilize the market sharing agreement.
Caribbean States organised in CARICOM recently brought forward reparation claims against several European States to compensate slavery and (native) genocides in the Caribbean and even threatened to approach the International Court of Justice. The paper provides for an analysis of the facts behind the CARICOM claim and asks whether the law of state responsibility is able to provide for the demanded compensation. As the intertemporal principle generally prohibits retroactive application of today’s international rules, the paper argues that the complete claim must be based on the law of state responsibility governing in the time of the respective conduct. An inquiry into the history of primary (prohibition of slavery and genocide) as well as secondary rules of State responsibility reveals that both sets of rules were underdeveloped or non-existent at the times of slavery and alleged (native) genocides. Therefore, the author concludes that the CARICOM claim is legally flawed but nevertheless worth the attention as it once again exposes imperial and colonial injustices of the past and their legitimization by historical international law and international/natural lawyers.
While the economic harm of cartels is caused by their price-increasing effect, sanctioning by courts rather targets at the underlying process of firms reaching a price-fixing agreement. This paper provides experimental evidence on the question whether such sanctioning meets the economic target, i.e., whether evidence of a collusive meeting of the firms and of the content of their communication reliably predicts subsequent prices. We find that already the mere mutual agreement to meet predicts a strong increase in prices. Conversely, express distancing from communication completely nullifies its otherwise price-increasing effect. Using machine learning, we show that communication only increases prices if it is very explicit about how the cartel plans to behave.
We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the government-mandated measures to contain its spread, affect the self-employed – particularly women – in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are 35% more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. Conversely, we do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, i.e. the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measures intending to mitigate the consequences of such shocks should account for this considerable variation in economic hardship.
Das Cluster-Modell von Krugman und Venables (1996) erklärt im Rahmen der Neuen Ökonomischen Geographie die Bildung von Agglomerationen bei regional immobilen Arbeitskräften. Die resultierenden Gleichgewichte hängen von der Höhe der Transportkosten ab, die allerdings in beiden Sektoren als gleich hoch unterstellt werden. Der vorliegende Beitrag erweitert dieses Modell um die Möglichkeit sektoral unterschiedlicher Transportkosten. Da eine analytische Lösung nichtmöglich ist, wird eine geeignete Simulationsmethode entwickelt. Anhand von Abbildungen wird dargestellt, welche Gleichgewichte sich bei verschiedenen Werten für die beiden Transportkostensätze ergeben.
Inhalt 1 Einleitung 2 Eine skizzenhafte Darstellung des deutschen Systemsder Hausmüllentsorgung 3 Zum Begriffsverständnis des Markt- und Wettbewerbsversagens 4 Transaktionales Marktversagen als Begründung für dasdeutsche System der Hausmüllentsorgung 4.1 Zur Theorie des transaktionalen Marktversagens 4.1.1 Definition und Formen des transaktionalen Marktversagens 4.1.2 Zu den zentralen Begriffen „Transaktion“ und „Transaktionskosten“ 4.2 Die Ermittelbarkeit der Transaktionskosten 4.3 Tendenzaussagen zur Höhe der Transaktionskosten mit Hilfe transaktionskostendeterminierenderFaktoren - Theorie und Anwendung 4.3.1 Spezifität 4.3.2 Messbarkeit 4.3.3 Unsicherheit 4.3.4 Transaktionshäufigkeit 4.3.5 Transaktionsatmosphäre 4.4 Marktpreis und Produktionskosten 4.5 Zum Nutzen der Abfallentsorgung für den privaten Haushalt 4.6 Das Verwaltungsmonopol als alternative, transaktionskostensenkende,nicht-marktliche Lösung 4.7 Transaktionales Marktversagen als Legitimationsgrundlage für einestaatliche Vorgabe des Koordinationsmechanismus 5 Fazit
Die Entwicklung der deutschen Regionen nach der Wiedervereinigung kann mit Hilfe der Neuen Ökonomischen Geographie erklärt werden. Die gängigen Modelle zeigen aber weder, wie dauerhafte Lohnsatzdifferenzen ohne vollständige Agglomeration entstehen, noch wird die Frage beantwortet, in welcher der betrachteten Regionen sich eine Agglomeration bildet. Diese Lücke wird hier geschlossen, indem das Modell von Ludema und Wooton (1997) erweitert und anschließend auf die Situation in Deutschland angewendet wird.
In diesem Beitrag wird das optimale Angebot für einen Wohnungsmarkt bestimmt. Die Nachfrage wird dafür aus einem offenen Modell der monozentrischen Stadt hergeleitet. Weiterhin wird davon ausgegangen, dass Wohnungen aufgrund der verschiedenen Standorte und aufgrund weiterer diskreter Wohnungsmerkmale heterogen sind. Der Wohnungsanbieter an einem Standort wird daher als Mehrproduktmonopolist aufgefasst. Als gewinnmaximale Angebotsstruktur zeigt sich, dass unter bestimmten Bedingungen Wohnungen gleichen Typs an verschiedenen Standorten gleich groß sind. Außerdem werden an den jeweiligen Standorten mehrere Wohnungstypen angeboten. Diese beiden Resultate stehen im deutlichen Gegensatz zu Modellen der Neuen Stadtökonomie, wonach an den Standorten jeweils nur ein Wohnungstyp angeboten wird, dessen Größe zudem über die verschiedenen Standorte variiert.
While a growing body of literature finds positive impacts of Start-Up Subsidies (SUS) on labor market outcomes of participants, little is known about how the design of these programs shapes their effectiveness and hence how to improve policy. As experimental variation in program design is unavailable, we exploit the 2011 reform of the current German SUS program for the unemployed which strengthened case-workers’ discretionary power, increased entry requirements and reduced monetary support. We estimate the impact of the reform on the program’s effectiveness using samples of participants and non-participants from before and after the reform. To control for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity as well as differential selection patterns based on observable characteristics over time, we combine Difference-in-Differences with inverse probability weighting using covariate balancing propensity scores. Holding participants’ observed characteristics as well as macroeconomic conditions constant, the results suggest that the reform was successful in raising employment effects on average. As these findings may be contaminated by changes in selection patterns based on unobserved characteristics, we assess our results using simulation-based sensitivity analyses and find that our estimates are highly robust to changes in unobserved characteristics. Hence, the reform most likely had a positive impact on the effectiveness of the program, suggesting that increasing entry requirements and reducing support in-creased the program’s impacts while reducing the cost per participant.
In many countries, women are over-represented among low-wage employees, which is why a wage floor could benefit them particularly. Following this notion, we analyse the impact of the German minimum wage introduction in 2015 on the gender wage gap. Germany poses an interesting case study in this context, since it has a rather high gender wage gap and set the minimum wage at a relatively high level, affecting more than four million employees. Based on individual data from the Structure of Earnings Survey, containing information for over one million employees working in 60,000 firms, we use a difference-in- difference framework that exploits regional differences in the bite of the minimum wage. We find a significant negative effect of the minimum wage on the regional gender wage gap. Between 2014 and 2018, the gap at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution was reduced by 4.6 percentage points (or 32%) in regions that were strongly affected by the minimum wage compared to less affected regions. For the gap at the 25th percentile, the effect still amounted to -18%, while for the mean it was smaller (-11%) and not particularly robust. We thus find that the minimum wage can indeed reduce gender wage disparities. While the effect is highest for the low-paid, it also reaches up into higher parts of the wage distribution.
Inhalt: Die Statistik als Spiegel der Gesellschaft - Statistik als „Weg in die Realität“ - Statistik als Spiegel des politischen Systems Grundelemente der demokratischen Ordnung Statistik und Gewaltenteilung - Das Legalitätsprinzip - Die vertikale Gewaltenteilung - Die Internationalisierung der Statistik - Exkurs: Statistik in einem monistischen System Statistik und konkurrierende Willensbildung - Mittel zur Konsensbildung - Die „informationelle Infrastruktur“ - Voraussetzungen der Infrastruktur - Statistik in der politischen Diskussion Statistik und partielle politische Integration - Grenzen der amtlichen Statistik - Statistik im staatsfreien Raum - Die Privatisierung der Statistik - Das Volkszählungsurteil
Inhalt 1 Einleitung 2 Die Ziele des EnWG 2005 3 Die wichtigsten Neuregelungen des EnWG 2005 3.1 Neuregelungen zwecks Förderung des Wettbewerbs 3.1.1 Netzzugang 3.1.2 Netzentgelte 3.1.3 Unbundling 3.1.4 Stromkennzeichnung 3.2 Neuregelungen im Interesse der Versorgungssicherheit 4 Auswirkungen der Neuregelungen auf die Ziele des EnWG 2005 4.1 Preisgünstigkeit 4.2 Versorgungssicherheit 4.3 Umweltverträglichkeit 4.4 Energieeffizienz und Verbraucherfreundlichkeit 5 Fazit
Im August 2007 verstarb Erich Hoppmann. Die Wettbewerbsökonomik hat ihm außerordentlich viel zu verdanken. Besondere Bekanntheit erlangte seine Kontroverse mit Erhard Kantzenbach über das adäquate Leitbild der Wettbewerbspolitik. Hoppmanns Leitbild der Wettbewerbsfreiheit entstand ab 1966 vornehmlich als Reaktion auf Kantzenbachs Leitbild der optimalen Wettbewerbsintensität. Hoppmanns Leitbild wandte sich aber auch gegen bestimmte Workability-Konzepte, ferner gegen die mit dem neoklassischen Modell der vollkommenen Konkurrenz verbundenen Gleichgewichtsvorstellungen. Wegen der für die Entwicklung der Wettbewerbspolitik in Deutschland bedeutsamen Kontroverse zwischen Hoppmann und Kantzenbach wollen wir uns im Folgenden auf deren Leitbilder konzentrieren. Zunächst werden beide Konzeptionen rekapituliert und sodann gegenübergestellt. Schließlich wird nach ihrer Bedeutung für die Theorie und Praxis der Wettbewerbspolitik gefragt.