Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (101)
- Working Paper (65)
- Part of a Book (7)
- Doctoral Thesis (7)
- Postprint (3)
- Other (2)
- Review (2)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (1)
- Report (1)
Keywords
- experiment (12)
- entrepreneurship (10)
- COVID-19 (8)
- innovation (8)
- communication (7)
- cartel (6)
- gender (6)
- survival (6)
- Experiment (5)
- climate change (5)
- climate policy (5)
- climate-change mitigation (5)
- inequality (5)
- locus of control (5)
- machine learning (5)
- collusion (4)
- health (4)
- mental health (4)
- minimum wage (4)
- self-employment (4)
- E-DSGE (3)
- R&D (3)
- agriculture (3)
- air pollution (3)
- beliefs (3)
- dictator game (3)
- energy policy (3)
- instrumental variables (3)
- job creation (3)
- resilience (3)
- risk attitudes (3)
- Charitable giving (2)
- Climate change (2)
- Economic growth (2)
- Environmental economics (2)
- Human Capital Investment (2)
- Innovation (2)
- Klimapolitik (2)
- Klimawandel (2)
- Mindestlohn (2)
- PHQ-4 score (2)
- Work-related Training (2)
- alcohol consumption (2)
- business services (2)
- child care (2)
- climate impacts (2)
- climate mitigation (2)
- confidence (2)
- cooperation (2)
- corporate leniency program (2)
- decision-making (2)
- decomposition methods (2)
- depression (2)
- drugs (2)
- econometrics (2)
- emergency-aid (2)
- employment (2)
- energy prices (2)
- energy supply and demand (2)
- environmental economics (2)
- field experiment (2)
- firm performance (2)
- gender pay gap (2)
- gender wage gap (2)
- general self-efficacy (2)
- health behavior (2)
- illusion of control (2)
- income (2)
- integrated assessment models (2)
- judgment of communication (2)
- just transition (2)
- labor productivity (2)
- linked employer-employee data (2)
- migration (2)
- optimism (2)
- persistence (2)
- preference for agency (2)
- prescriptions (2)
- price competition (2)
- productivity (2)
- productivity slowdown (2)
- public good (2)
- public transport (2)
- renewable energy (2)
- representative longitudinal survey data (2)
- representative real-time survey data (2)
- risk perception (2)
- sanctions (2)
- self-employed (2)
- sickness (2)
- start-up subsidies (2)
- startups (2)
- strategic uncertainty (2)
- training (2)
- treatment effects (2)
- unemployment (2)
- weather (2)
- welfare (2)
- welfare economics (2)
- 1.5 ◦C (1)
- AR6 (1)
- Ability Tracking (1)
- Active Labor Market Policy (1)
- Adam Smith (1)
- Arbeitszufriedenheit (1)
- Ask avoidance (1)
- Assessment Report IPCC (1)
- Backward ownership (1)
- Balancing weights (1)
- Beschäftigungseffekte (1)
- Best shot game (1)
- Buyer behavior (1)
- CO2-Preis (1)
- COVID-19 pandemic (1)
- Capital requirements (1)
- Carbon Capture (1)
- Carbon Dioxide Removal (1)
- Carbon pricing (1)
- Cardiovascular disease (1)
- Classroom (1)
- Climate Policy (1)
- Climate change economics (1)
- Climate policy (1)
- Climate-change impacts (1)
- Commercial peace (1)
- Composition (1)
- Continuous Treatment (1)
- Coordination (1)
- Covid-19 (1)
- D31 (1)
- Damages (1)
- Deutschland (1)
- Development aid End of history (1)
- DiD (1)
- Difference-in-Differences (1)
- Discrete choice (1)
- Distanz (1)
- Doux commerce (1)
- E25 (1)
- E32 (1)
- EU (1)
- Economic policy (1)
- Economics (1)
- Electricity sector (1)
- Emissionshandel (1)
- Employee Training (1)
- Energiewende (1)
- Energy and development (1)
- Entrepreneurship (1)
- Entry deterrence (1)
- Environmental Policy (1)
- Environmental impact (1)
- Euro area (1)
- Experimental macroeconomics (1)
- Externalitäten (1)
- Firm Growth (1)
- Food security (1)
- Foreclosure (1)
- Foreign policy (1)
- Gender Wage Gap (1)
- Gesundheitsökonomik (1)
- Greece (1)
- Green quantitative easing (1)
- Green transition (1)
- High growth firms (1)
- Human Capital Investments (1)
- IAM (1)
- Impact channels (1)
- Impermanence (1)
- India (1)
- Inequality (1)
- Institutions (1)
- International unions (1)
- Intertemporal Choice (1)
- Intertemporal optimization (1)
- Intertemporal substitution (1)
- Job Creation (1)
- Job Satisfaction (1)
- Job Search (1)
- Klassenzusammensetzung (1)
- Klimaschutzgesetz (1)
- Kontrollüberzeugung (1)
- Krankenhaus (1)
- Labor Market Mobility (1)
- Labor supply (1)
- Laborexperiment (1)
- Landwirtschaft (1)
- Language (1)
- Large firms (1)
- Lebensmittelpreise (1)
- Leistungsdifferenzierung (1)
- Limits of growth (1)
- Linguistic Saving Hypothesis (1)
- Long-term Crisis (1)
- Loss aversion (1)
- Luftverschmutzung (1)
- MSMEs (1)
- Macroeconomic Dynamics (1)
- Management (1)
- Manager Decisions (1)
- Mediation Analysis (1)
- Mediationsanalyse (1)
- Migration (1)
- Minimum Wage (1)
- Minority shareholdings (1)
- Monetary policy (1)
- Monte-Carlo simulation (1)
- Nachhaltige Steuerreform (1)
- Nachhaltiges Finanzwesen (1)
- National Educational Panel Study (starting cohort 6) (1)
- Nominal frictions (1)
- Observational studies (1)
- Pace of Life (1)
- Paris Agreement (1)
- Partial ownership (1)
- Peer Effects (1)
- Peer-Effekte (1)
- Perceived cost versus actual cost of war (1)
- Persistence (1)
- Persönlichkeitsmerkmale (1)
- Phillips curve (1)
- Pigou-Steuern (1)
- Pigouvian taxation (1)
- Policy Design (1)
- Policy Reform (1)
- Political establishment (1)
- Pollution (1)
- Populism (1)
- Precautionary saving (1)
- Pro-environmental (1)
- Production factors (1)
- Productivity (1)
- Public infrastructure (1)
- Public investments (1)
- Public transport (1)
- Push and Pull Theories (1)
- Quality of regional governments (1)
- Rebate and discount (1)
- Refund (1)
- Regional Bite (1)
- Regional cooperation (1)
- Regions (1)
- Regulation (1)
- Regulation of dominant firms (1)
- Rentenpolitik (1)
- Repeated request (1)
- Replication (1)
- Replikation (1)
- Risikobereitschaft (1)
- Risk Attitudes (1)
- Risk Preferences (1)
- Risk aversion (1)
- SOEP (1)
- SOEP-LEE2 (1)
- Search Frictions (1)
- Secondary Education Systems (1)
- Sekundarbildungssysteme (1)
- Small firms (1)
- Social Cost of Carbon (1)
- Special interests (1)
- Speed-Up Society (1)
- Start-Up Subsidies (1)
- Start-up Motivation (1)
- Stundenlöhne und Monatseinkommen (1)
- Survival (1)
- Transfer (1)
- Trump phenomenon (1)
- Ultimatum Game (1)
- Ungleichheit (1)
- Uniform pricing (1)
- Unintended Consequence (1)
- Vertical integration (1)
- Weiterbildungen (1)
- West Africa (1)
- Wetter (1)
- accidents (1)
- adaptation scenarios (1)
- affordable housing (1)
- alcohol control policies (1)
- ambiguity attitudes (1)
- banking (1)
- behavior (1)
- behavioral economics (1)
- bezahlbarer Wohnraum (1)
- binge drinking (1)
- birthright citizenship (1)
- blended learning (1)
- board diversity (1)
- business cycle (1)
- business expansion (1)
- business growth (1)
- campaign contributions (1)
- capacity building (1)
- carbon emissions (1)
- carbon price (1)
- carbon pricing (1)
- cardiovascular disease (1)
- career costs of children (1)
- charitable giving (1)
- climate change mitigation (1)
- climate change scenario services (1)
- climate change scenarios (1)
- climate damages (1)
- climate sciences (1)
- climate services (1)
- climate-change policy (1)
- co-production (1)
- coal transitions (1)
- collective memory (1)
- commuting (1)
- comparative development (1)
- congestion (1)
- cost-benefit analysis (1)
- cost-effectiveness analysis (1)
- creation (1)
- cross-sectional regression (1)
- crowding out (1)
- cycling (1)
- damage (1)
- day care (1)
- decarbonization (1)
- developing country cities (1)
- diagnostics (1)
- difference-in-difference (1)
- digitalization (1)
- discrete choice (1)
- discrimination (1)
- distance (1)
- distributive shocks (1)
- divergent thinking (1)
- domestic work (1)
- double dividend (1)
- dynamic binary choice (1)
- dynamic panel estimation (1)
- economic effects (1)
- economics (1)
- efficiency (1)
- emissions scenarios (1)
- employee training (1)
- employment effects (1)
- employment relations (1)
- energy efficiency (1)
- energy expenditure (1)
- energy investments (1)
- energy modelling (1)
- energy supply (1)
- entrepreneurial performance (1)
- entrepreneurs (1)
- entrepreneurship policy (1)
- environment (1)
- environmental health (1)
- environmental sciences (1)
- environmental tax reform (1)
- equity crowdfunding (1)
- evaluation (1)
- evidence synthesis (1)
- evidence-based policy (1)
- existence value (1)
- experimental design (1)
- experimental economics (1)
- extensive margin (1)
- finance (1)
- financial access and inclusion (1)
- financial friction (1)
- firm growth (1)
- fiscal policy (1)
- food prices (1)
- framing (1)
- function (1)
- gambler’s fallac (1)
- gender care gap (1)
- gender differences (1)
- gender division (1)
- gentrification (1)
- geography (1)
- geschlechtsspezifische Lohnlücke (1)
- global commons (1)
- global warming (1)
- goal-setting (1)
- green investments (1)
- greenhouse gas mitigation (1)
- gridded data (1)
- growth regression (1)
- growth strategy (1)
- grüne Investitionen (1)
- habit formation (1)
- health economics (1)
- heat demand (1)
- high-dimensional fixed effects (1)
- hiring (1)
- home office (1)
- horizontal equity (1)
- hospital (1)
- hot hand fallacy (1)
- hourly wages (1)
- hourly wages and monthly earnings (1)
- household analysis (1)
- housing market (1)
- housing sector (1)
- human capital (1)
- human capital investments (1)
- human resource management (1)
- impact projections (1)
- in-group favoritism (1)
- incentivised choices (1)
- incidental parameter bias correction (1)
- income and wealth inequality (1)
- income inequality (1)
- individual choices (1)
- individuelle Entscheidungen (1)
- infinitely repeated game (1)
- inflation (1)
- innovation systems (1)
- institutions (1)
- integrated assessment (1)
- integrated assessment modelling (1)
- internationale Kooperation (1)
- internship (1)
- investment subsidy (1)
- irrelevant information (1)
- job (1)
- job satisfaction (1)
- lab experiment (1)
- lab-in-the-field experiment (1)
- labor economics (1)
- labor market outcomes (1)
- labor unions (1)
- laboratory experiment (1)
- language (1)
- large firms (1)
- leadership (1)
- linked employee- employer data (1)
- local employer density (1)
- long-term crisis (1)
- loss aversion (1)
- lying behavior (1)
- manager decisions (1)
- managment (1)
- market-entry game (1)
- matching (1)
- maternal employment (1)
- measles vaccine (1)
- microfirms (1)
- military conflicts (1)
- mitigation pathways (1)
- mitigation policies (1)
- mitigation scenarios (1)
- multi-valued treatment (1)
- natural experiment (1)
- natural field experiment (1)
- negative emissions (1)
- non-Ricardian households (1)
- obesity (1)
- objective health measures (1)
- out-group discrimination (1)
- panel regression (1)
- pension policy (1)
- personal data (1)
- personal income taxation (1)
- personality traits (1)
- physical activity (1)
- planetary boundaries (1)
- policy reform (1)
- political economy (1)
- political feasibility (1)
- political ideology (1)
- pollution (1)
- population density (1)
- post-Soviet (1)
- precautionary principle (1)
- primary school (1)
- prisoner’s dilemma (1)
- privacy (1)
- pro-environmental behaviour (1)
- process-based integrated assessment model (1)
- promises (1)
- property taxes (1)
- prosocial behavior (1)
- push and pull theories (1)
- redistribution (1)
- regional bite (1)
- regional determinants (1)
- regulatory environment (1)
- removal subsidies (1)
- renewable energy subsidies (1)
- rent control (1)
- replication (1)
- retirement policies (1)
- returns to education (1)
- revenue recycling (1)
- road casualties (1)
- robustness (1)
- sales restriction (1)
- school health examinations (1)
- segregation (1)
- service sector (1)
- shadow price (1)
- signalling (1)
- small businesses (1)
- small firms (1)
- social activity (1)
- social costs of carbon (1)
- social image concerns (1)
- social investment (1)
- social mobility (1)
- soft information (1)
- space (1)
- spatial discounting (1)
- spatial mobility (1)
- spillover effects (1)
- stag-hunt game (1)
- start-up motivation (1)
- stochastic uncertainty (1)
- strategic-uncertainty attitudes (1)
- subjective survival probability (1)
- survey design (1)
- sustainable finance (1)
- synthetic control (1)
- systematic map (1)
- tax competition (1)
- tax progressivity (1)
- taxpayer subsidies (1)
- terms-of-trade effects (1)
- text analysis (1)
- time perspectives (1)
- trade (1)
- trade policy (1)
- traffic (1)
- training participation (1)
- training supply (1)
- transition economies (1)
- transport subsidies (1)
- two-way fixed effects (1)
- uncertainty (1)
- unilateral climate policy (1)
- university laboratories (1)
- urban (1)
- visualization (1)
- vocational education (1)
- voting (1)
- voucher (1)
- wage distribution (1)
- wars (1)
- weekly working hours (1)
- windfall gains (1)
- women in management (1)
- women’s careers (1)
- work-related training (1)
- worker-manager relations (1)
- wöchentliche Arbeitszeiten (1)
- Ökonometrie (1)
- öffentlicher Verkehr (1)
Institute
- Fachgruppe Volkswirtschaftslehre (189) (remove)
Personal data increasingly serve as inputs to public goods. Like other types of contributions to public goods, personal data are likely to be underprovided. We investigate whether classical remedies to underprovision are also applicable to personal data and whether the privacy-sensitive nature of personal data must be additionally accounted for. In a randomized field experiment on a public online education platform, we prompt users to complete their profiles with personal information. Compared to a control message, we find that making public benefits salient increases the number of personal data contributions significantly. This effect is even stronger when additionally emphasizing privacy protection, especially for sensitive information. Our results further suggest that emphasis on both public benefits and privacy protection attracts personal data from a more diverse set of contributors.
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.
Previous literature has shown that task-based goal-setting and distributed learning is beneficial to university-level course performance. We investigate the effects of making these insights salient to students by sending out goal-setting prompts in a blended learning environment with bi-weekly quizzes. The randomized field experiment in a large mandatory economics course shows promising results: the treated students outperform 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. While we cannot causally disentangle the effects of goal-setting from the prompt sent, we observe that treated students use the online learning platform earlier in the semester and attempt more online exercises compared to the control group. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that higher treatment effects are associated with low performance at the beginning of the course.
Steuern und Abgaben auf Produkte oder Verbrauch mit gesellschaftlichen Folgekosten (externe Kosten) – sogenannte Pigou- oder Lenkungssteuern – sind ein gesellschaftliches „Win-Win-Instrument“. Sie verbessern die Wohlfahrt und schützen gleichzeitig die Umwelt und das Klima. Dies wird erreicht, indem umweltschädigende Aktivitäten einen Preis bekommen, der möglichst exakt der Höhe des Schadens entspricht. Eine konsequente Bepreisung der externen Kosten nach diesem Prinzip könnte in Deutschland erhebliche zusätzliche Einnahmen erbringen: Basierend auf bisherigen Studien zu externen Kosten wären zusätzliche Einnahmen in der Größenordnung von 348 bis 564 Milliarden Euro pro Jahr (44 bis 71 Prozent der gesamten Steuereinnahmen) möglich. Die Autoren warnen allerdings, dass die Bezifferung der externen Kosten mit erheblichen Unsicherheiten verbunden ist. Damit Lenkungssteuern und -abgaben ihre positiven Lenkungs- und Wohlstandseffekte voll entfalten können, seien zudem institutionelle Reformen notwendig.
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.
The present paper proposes a novel approach for equilibrium selection in the infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma where players can communicate before choosing their strategies. This approach yields a critical discount factor that makes different predictions for cooperation than the usually considered sub-game perfect or risk dominance critical discount factors. In laboratory experiments, we find that our factor is useful for predicting cooperation. For payoff changes where the usually considered factors and our factor make different predictions, the observed cooperation is consistent with the predictions based on our factor.
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.
The leniency rule revisited
(2021)
The experimental literature on antitrust enforcement provides robust evidence that communication plays an important role for the formation and stability of cartels. We extend these studies through a design that distinguishes between innocuous communication and communication about a cartel, sanctioning only the latter. To this aim, we introduce a participant in the role of the competition authority, who is properly incentivized to judge the communication content and price setting behavior of the firms. Using this novel design, we revisit the question whether a leniency rule successfully destabilizes cartels. In contrast to existing experimental studies, we find that a leniency rule does not affect cartelization. We discuss potential explanations for this contrasting result.
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.
The experimental literature on antitrust enforcement provides robust evidence that communication plays an important role for the formation and stability of cartels. We extend these studies through a design that distinguishes between innocuous communication and communication about a cartel, sanctioning only the latter. To this aim, we introduce a participant in the role of the competition authority, who is properly incentivized to judge communication content and price setting behavior of the firms. Using this novel design, we revisit the question whether a leniency rule successfully destabilizes cartels. In contrast to existing experimental studies, we find that a leniency rule does not affect cartelization. We discuss potential explanations for this contrasting result.
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 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.
In the context of microfirms, this paper analyzes whether the link between the three aspects involving innovative activities—R&D, innovative output, and productivity—hold for knowledge-intensive services. With especially high start-up rates and the majority of employees in microfirms, knowledge-intensive services (KIS) have a starkly different profile from manufacturing. Results from our structural models indicate that KIS firms benefit from innovation activities through increased labor productivity with highly skilled employees being similarly important compared to R&D for creating innovation output in microfirms. Moreover, the firm size advantage of large firms found for manufacturing almost disappears in KIS, with start-ups and young firms having a higher probability of initiating innovation activities and of successfully turning knowledge into innovation output than mature firms.
The goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C as set out in the Paris Agreement calls for a strategic assessment of societal pathways and policy strategies. Besides policy makers, new powerful actors from the private sector, including finance, have stepped up to engage in forward-looking assessments of a Paris-compliant and climate-resilient future. Climate change scenarios have addressed this demand by providing scientific insights on the possible pathways ahead to limit warming in line with the Paris climate goal. Despite the increased interest, the potential of climate change scenarios has not been fully unleashed, mostly due to a lack of an intermediary service that provides guidance and access to climate change scenarios. This perspective presents the concept of a climate change scenario service, its components, and a prototypical implementation to overcome this shortcoming aiming to make scenarios accessible to a broader audience of societal actors and decision makers.
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.
Internships during tertiary education have become substantially more common over the past decades in many industrialised countries. This study examines the impact of a voluntary intra-curricular internship experience during university studies on the probability of being invited to a job interview. To estimate a causal relationship, we conducted a randomised field experiment in which we sent 1248 fictitious, but realistic, resumes to real job openings. We find that applicants with internship experience have, on average, a 12.6% higher probability of being invited to a job interview.
Atwood analyzes the effects of the 1963 U.S. measles vaccination on long-run labor market outcomes, using a generalized difference-in-differences approach. We reproduce the results of this paper and perform a battery of robustness checks. Overall, we confirm that the measles vaccination had positive labor market effects. While the negative effect on the likelihood of living in poverty and the positive effect on the probability of being employed are very robust across the different specifications, the headline estimate—the effect on earnings—is more sensitive to the exclusion of certain regions and survey years.
Atwood (2022) analyzes the effects of the 1963 U.S. measles vaccination on longrun labor market outcomes, using a generalized difference-in-differences approach. We reproduce the results of this paper and perform a battery of robustness checks. Overall, we confirm that the measles vaccination had positive labor market effects. While the negative effect on the likelihood of living in poverty and the positive effect on the probability of being employed are very robust across the different specifications, the headline estimate-the effect on earnings-is more sensitive to the exclusion of certain regions and survey years.
The existential threat to small businesses, based on their crucial role in the economy, is behind the plethora of scholarly studies in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining the 15 contributions of the special issue on the “Economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship and small businesses,” the paper comprises four parts: a systematic review of the literature on the effect on entrepreneurship and small businesses; a discussion of four literature strands based on this review; an overview of the contributions in this special issue; and some ideas for post-pandemic economic research.
Energy system developments and investments in the decisive decade for the Paris Agreement goals
(2021)
The Paris Agreement does not only stipulate to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C, it also calls for 'making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions'. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand the implications of climate targets for energy systems and quantify the associated investment requirements in the coming decade. A meaningful analysis must however consider the near-term mitigation requirements to avoid the overshoot of a temperature goal. It must also include the recently observed fast technological progress in key mitigation options. Here, we use a new and unique scenario ensemble that limit peak warming by construction and that stems from seven up-to-date integrated assessment models. This allows us to study the near-term implications of different limits to peak temperature increase under a consistent and up-to-date set of assumptions. We find that ambitious immediate action allows for limiting median warming outcomes to well below 2 °C in all models. By contrast, current nationally determined contributions for 2030 would add around 0.2 °C of peak warming, leading to an unavoidable transgression of 1.5 °C in all models, and 2 °C in some. In contrast to the incremental changes as foreseen by current plans, ambitious peak warming targets require decisive emission cuts until 2030, with the most substantial contribution to decarbonization coming from the power sector. Therefore, investments into low-carbon power generation need to increase beyond current levels to meet the Paris goals, especially for solar and wind technologies and related system enhancements for electricity transmission, distribution and storage. Estimates on absolute investment levels, up-scaling of other low-carbon power generation technologies and investment shares in less ambitious scenarios vary considerably across models. In scenarios limiting peak warming to below 2 °C, while coal is phased out quickly, oil and gas are still being used significantly until 2030, albeit at lower than current levels. This requires continued investments into existing oil and gas infrastructure, but investments into new fields in such scenarios might not be needed. The results show that credible and effective policy action is essential for ensuring efficient allocation of investments aligned with medium-term climate targets.
In response to strong revenue and income losses facing a large share of self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency-aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the confidence to survive the crisis. We investigate how the digitalization level of self-employed individuals influences the program’s effectiveness. Employing propensity score matching, we find that the emergency-aid program had only moderately positive effects on the confidence of self-employed to survive the crisis. However, self-employed whose businesses were highly digitalized, benefitted much more from the state aid than those whose businesses were less digitalized. This only holds true for those self-employed, who started the digitalization processes already before the crisis. Taking a regional perspective, we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the regional broadband infrastructure matters in the sense that it increases the effectiveness of the emergency-aid program. Our findings show the interplay between governmental support programs, the digitalization levels of entrepreneurs, and the regional digital infrastructure. The study helps public policy to improve the impact of crisis-related policy instruments, ultimately increasing the resilience of small firms in times of crises.
Sollte Klimapolitik auf Energiepreisanstiege reagieren und kurzfristig CO2-Preise anpassen, um Haushalte zu entlasten? Alkis Blanz, Ulrich Eydam, Maik Heinemann und Matthias Kalkuhl, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) und Universität Potsdam, zeigen, dass die Verwendung der Einnahmen aus der CO2-Bepreisung von entscheidender Bedeutung ist. Werden diese weitestgehend durch Steuersenkungen oder Transfers an Haushalte rückverteilt, sollten CO2-Preise nicht an kurzfristige Energiepreisschwankungen angepasst werden. Haushalte profitieren stärker von einer direkten Stabilisierung ihres Einkommens als von der Stabilisierung der Energiepreise. Werden Einnahmen aus der CO2-Bepreisung nicht rückerstattet, sind dagegen antizyklische CO2-Preise wohlfahrtserhöhend.
Optimal carbon pricing with fluctuating energy prices — emission targeting vs. price targeting
(2022)
Prices of primary energy commodities display marked fluctuations over time. Market-based climate policy instruments (e.g., emissions pricing) create incentives to reduce energy consumption by increasing the user cost of fossil energy. This raises the question of whether climate policy should respond to fluctuations in fossil energy prices? We study this question within an environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (E-DSGE) model calibrated on the German economy. Our results indicate that the welfare implications of dynamic emissions pricing crucially depend on how the revenues are used. When revenues are fully absorbed, a reduction in emissions prices stabilizes the economy in response to energy price shocks. However, when revenues are at least partially recycled, a stable emissions price improves overall welfare. This result is robust to different modeling assumptions.
The effects of energy price increases are heterogeneous between households and firms. Financially constrained poorer households, who spend a larger relative share of their income on energy, are particularly affected. In this analysis, we examine the macroeconomic and welfare effects of energy price shocks in the presence of credit-constrained households that have subsistence-level energy demand. Within a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model calibrated for the German economy, we compare the performance of different policy measures (transfers and energy subsidies) and different financing schemes (income tax vs. debt). Our results show that credit-constrained households prefer debt over tax financing regardless of the compensation measure due to their difficulty to smooth consumption. On the contrary, rich households tend to prefer tax-financed measures as they increase the labor supply of poor households. From an aggregate perspective, tax-financed measures targeting firms effectively cushion aggregate output losses.
The self-employed faced strong income losses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many governments introduced programs to financially support the self-employed during the pandemic, including Germany. The German Ministry for Economic Affairs announced a €50bn emergency-aid program in March 2020, offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those facing substantial revenue declines. By reassuring the self- employed that the government ‘would not let them down’ during the crisis, the program had also the important aim of motivating the self-employed to get through the crisis. We investigate whether the program affected the confidence of the self-employed to survive the crisis using real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations. We employ propensity score matching, making use of a rich set of variables that influence the subjective survival probability as main outcome measure. We observe that this program had significant effects, with the subjective survival probability of the self- employed being moderately increased. We reveal important effect heterogeneities with respect to education, industries, and speed of payment. Notably, positive effects only occur among those self-employed whose application was processed quickly. This suggests stress-induced waiting costs due to the uncertainty associated with the administrative processing and the overall pandemic situation. Our findings have policy implications for the design of support programs, while also contributing to the literature on the instruments and effects of entrepreneurship policy interventions in crisis situations.
This paper studies the effect of public transport policies on urban pollution. It uses a quantitative equilibrium model with residential choice and mode choice. Pollution comes from commuting and residential energy use. The model parameters are calibrated to replicate key variables for American metropolitan areas. In the counterfactual, I study how free public transport coupled with increasing transit speed affects the equilibrium. In the baseline simulation, total pollution falls by 0.4%, as decreasing emissions from transport are partly offset by rising residential emissions. A second counterfactual compares a city with and without public transit. This large investment decreases pollution by 1.7%. When jobs are decentralized, emissions fall by 0.5% in the first and by 3% in the second counterfactual.
This chapter reviews the interplay of agglomeration and pollution as well as the effect of energy policies on pollution in an urban context. It starts by describing the effect of agglomeration on pollution. While this effect is theoretically ambiguous, empirical research tends to find that larger cities are more polluted, but per capita emissions fall with city size. The chapter discusses the implications for optimal city size. Conversely, urban pollution tends to discourage agglomeration if larger cities are more exposed to pollution. The chapter then considers various energy policies and their effect on urban pollution. Specifically, it looks at the effects of energy and transport policies as well as urban policies such as zoning.
We use a quantitative spatial equilibrium model to evaluate the distributional and welfare impacts of a recent temporary rent control policy in Berlin, Germany. We calibrate the model to key features of Berlin’s housing market, in particular the recent gentrification of inner city locations. As expected, gentrification benefits rich homeowners, while poor renter households lose. Our counterfactual analysis mimicks the rent control policy. We find that this policy reduces welfare for rich and poor households and in fact, the percentage change in welfare is largest for the poorest households. We also study alternative affordable housing policies such as subsidies and re-zoning policies, which are better suited to address the adverse consequences of gentrification.
Steigende Mieten?
(2022)
Vor dem Hintergrund rasant steigender Mieten in deutschen Großstädten untersuchen wir in einer neuen Studie die Auswirkungen von Gentrifizierung sowie von politischen Gegenmaßnahmen auf unterschiedliche Einkommensgruppen anhand eines quantitativen Modells für Berlin. Wir finden, dass eine Mietpreisbindung (wie der „Mietendeckel“) allen Haushalten, vor allem aber den ärmeren Haushalten, schadet. Andere Maßnahmen wie Neubau oder direkte Subventionen schneiden besser ab.
We study the effect of energy and transport policies on pollution in two developing country cities. We use a quantitative equilibrium model with choice of housing, energy use, residential location, transport mode, and energy technology. Pollution comes from commuting and residential energy use. The model parameters are calibrated to replicate key variables for two developing country cities, Maputo, Mozambique, and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In the counterfactual simulations, we study how various transport and energy policies affect equilibrium pollution. Policies may be induce rebound effects from increasing residential energy use or switching to high emission modes or locations. In general, these rebound effects tend to be largest for subsidies to public transport or modern residential energy technology.
Property tax competition
(2022)
We develop a model of property taxation and characterize equilibria under three alternative taxa-tion regimes often used in the public finance literature: decentralized taxation, centralized taxation, and “rent seeking” regimes. We show that decentralized taxation results in inefficiently high tax rates, whereas centralized taxation yields a common optimal tax rate, and tax rates in the rent-seeking regime can be either inefficiently high or low. We quantify the effects of switching from the observed tax system to the three regimes for Japan and Germany. The decentralized or rent-seeking regime best describes the Japanese tax system, whereas the centralized regime does so for Germany. We also quantify the welfare effects of regime changes.
Urban pollution
(2022)
We use worldwide satellite data to analyse how population size and density affect urban pollution. We find that density significantly increases pollution exposure. Looking only at urban areas, we find that population size affects exposure more than density. Moreover, the effect is driven mostly by population commuting to core cities rather than the core city population itself. We analyse heterogeneity by geography and income levels. By and large, the influence of population on pollution is greatest in Asia and middle-income countries. A counterfactual simulation shows that PM2.5 exposure would fall by up to 36% and NO2 exposure up to 53% if within countries population size were equalized across all cities.
Spatial and social mobility
(2018)
This paper analyzes the relationship between spatial mobility and social mobility. It develops a two-skill-type spatial equilibrium model of two regions with location preferences where each region consists of an urban area that is home to workplaces and residences and an exclusively residential suburban area. The paper demonstrates that relative regional social mobility is negatively correlated with segregation and inequality. In the model, segregation, income inequality, and social mobility are driven by differences between urban and residential areas in commuting cost differences between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, and also by the magnitude of taste heterogeneity.
This paper presents an experiment on the effect of retroactive price-reduction schemes on buyers’ repeated purchase decisions. Such schemes promise buyers a reduced price for all units that are bought in a certain time frame if the total quantity that is purchased passes a given threshold. This study finds a loyalty-enhancing effect of retroactive price-reduction schemes only if the buyers ex-ante expected that entering into the scheme would maximize their monetary gain, but later learn that they should leave the scheme. Furthermore, the effect crucially hinges on the framing of the price reduction.
This paper presents results from an experiment on the effects of recommended retail prices on consumer and retailer behaviour. We present evidence that recommended retail prices, despite their non-binding nature, influence consumers’ willingness to pay by setting a reference point. At a given price, consumers buy more the higher the recommended retail price is, and their demand drops at prices above the recommended retail price, even when it is entirely uninformative about the value of the product. Retailers in this study are subject to similar anchoring effects, but they do not anticipate consumers’ behaviour well and are thus not able to exploit their behavioural biases.
Strategic uncertainty is the uncertainty that players face with respect to the purposeful behavior of other players in an interactive decision situation. Our paper develops a new method for measuring strategic-uncertainty attitudes and distinguishing them from risk and ambiguity attitudes. We vary the source of uncertainty (whether strategic or not) across conditions in a ceteris paribus manner. We elicit certainty equivalents of participating in two strategic 2x2 games (a stag-hunt and a market-entry game) as well as certainty equivalents of related lotteries that yield the same possible payoffs with exogenously given probabilities (risk) and lotteries with unknown probabilities (ambiguity). We provide a structural model of uncertainty attitudes that allows us to measure a preference for or an aversion against the source of uncertainty, as well as optimism or pessimism regarding the desired outcome. We document systematic attitudes towards strategic uncertainty that vary across contexts. Under strategic complementarity [substitutability], the majority of participants tend to be pessimistic [optimistic] regarding the desired outcome. However, preferences for the source of uncertainty are distributed around zero.
Leadership plays an important role for the efficient and fair solution of social dilemmas but the effectiveness of a leader can vary substantially. Two main factors of leadership impact are the ability to induce high contributions by all group members and the (expected) fair use of power. Participants in our experiment decide about contributions to a public good. After all contributions are made, the leader can choose how much of the joint earnings to assign to herself; the remainder is distributed equally among the followers. Using machine learning techniques, we study whether the content of initial open statements by the group members predicts their behavior as a leader and whether groups are able to identify such clues and endogenously appoint a “good” leader to solve the dilemma. We find that leaders who promise fairness are more likely to behave fairly, and that followers appoint as leaders those who write more explicitly about fairness and efficiency. However, in their contribution decision, followers focus on the leader’s first-move contribution and place less importance on the content of the leader’s statements.
This paper tests the robustness of voluntary cooperation in a sequential best shot game, a public good game in which the maximal contribution determines the level of public good provision. Thus, efficiency enhancing voluntary cooperation requires asymmetric behavior whose coordination is more difficult. Nevertheless, we find robust cooperation irrespective of treatment-specific institutional obstacles. To explain this finding, we distinguish three behavioral patterns aiming at both, voluntary cooperation and (immediate) payoff equality.
Stochastic uncertainty can cause difficult coordination problems that may hinder mutually beneficial cooperation. We propose a mechanism of ex-post voluntary transfers designed to circumvent these coordination problems and ask whether it can do so. To test this, we implement a controlled laboratory experiment based on a repeatedly played Ultimatum Game with a stochastic endowment. Contrary to our hypothesis, we find that allowing voluntary transfers does not entail an efficiency increase. We suggest and analyze two main reasons for this finding: First, the stochastic uncertainty forces proposers to accept high strategic uncertainty if they intend to cooperate by claiming a low amount (which many proposers do not). Second, many responders behave only incompletely conditionally cooperative by transferring too little (which hinders cooperation in future periods).
In this paper, we study one channel through which communication may facilitate cooperative behavior – belief precision. In a prisoner’s dilemma experiment, we show that communication not only makes individuals more optimistic that their partner will cooperate but also increases the precision of this belief, thereby reducing strategic uncertainty. To disentangle the shift in mean beliefs from the increase in precision, we elicit beliefs and precision in a two-stage procedure and in three situations: without communication, before communication, and after communication. We find that the precision of beliefs increases during communication.
This paper studies the effects of two different frames on decisions in a dictator game. Before making their allocation decision, dictators read a short text. Depending on the treatment, the text either emphasizes their decision power and freedom of choice or it stresses their responsibility for the receiver’s payoff. Including a control treatment without such a text, three treatments are conducted with a total of 207 dictators. Our results show a different reaction to these texts depending on the dictator’s gender. We find that only men react positively to a text that stresses their responsibility for the receiver, while only women seem to react positively to a text that emphasizes their decision power and freedom of choice.
Getting a yes
(2020)
This paper studies how the request for a favor has to be devised in order to maximize its chance of success. We present results from a mini-dictator game, in which the recipient can send a free-form text message to the dictator before the latter decides. We find that putting effort into the message, writing in a humorous way and mentioning reasons why the money is needed pays off. Additionally, we find differences in the behavior of male and female dictators. Only men react positively to efficiency arguments, while only women react to messages that emphasize the dictators power and responsibility.
This paper studies how individuals discount the utility they derive from their provision of goods over spatial distance. In a controlled laboratory experiment in Germany, we elicit preferences for the provision of the same good at different locations. To isolate spatial preferences from any other direct value of the goods being close to the individual, we focus on goods with “existence value.” We find that individuals put special weight on the provision of these goods in their immediate vicinity. This “vicinity bias” represents a spatial analogy to the “present bias” in the time dimension.
This paper studies the impact of a ban on late-night off-premise alcohol sales between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. in Germany. We use three large administrative data sets: (i) German diagnosis related groups-Statistik, (ii) data from a large social health insurance, and (iii) Road Traffic Accident Statistics. Applying difference-in-differences and synthetic-control-group methods, we find that the ban had no effects on alcohol-related road casualties, but significantly reduced alcohol-related hospitalizations (doctor visits) among young people by around 9 (18) percent. The decrease is driven by fewer hospitalizations due to acute alcohol intoxication during the night—when the ban is in place—but not during the day.
Fünf Jahre Mindestlohn
(2020)
Die Einführung des gesetzlichen Mindestlohns zum 1. Januar 2015 war nach der Agenda 2010 die bedeutendste Arbeitsmarktreform der letzten 20 Jahre. Durch das relativ hohe Eingriffsniveau – etwa 4 Millionen oder 11% aller Erwerbstätigen verdienten vor der Einführung weniger als die neue Bruttolohnuntergrenze von 8,50 Euro pro Stunde – und die nahezu umfassende Gültigkeit, waren Hoffnungen und Befürchtungen gleichermaßen groß und viele Fragen zu den Wirkungen offen. Heute, fünf Jahre nach der Einführung und basierend auf zahlreichen, breit angelegten Evaluationsstudien, ist es Zeit für eine Zwischenbilanz. Die Löhne im unteren Bereich sind gestiegen, ohne dass es zu einem größeren Abbau an Beschäftigung gekommen ist. Gleichzeitig hat der Mindestlohn aber nicht die Zahl der Transferbezieher verringert. Auch das Armutsrisiko hat nicht abgenommen. Der Mindestlohn ist in vielerlei Hinsicht nicht existenzsichernd und wird auch nicht vollumfänglich durchgesetzt. Insofern wurde fünf Jahre nach der Einführung zwar einiges erreicht, wichtige Ziele aber auch verfehlt. Die Politik ist gefordert.
We extend standard models of work-related training by explicitly incorporating workers’ locus of control into the investment decision through the returns they expect. Our model predicts that higher internal control results in increased take-up of general, but not specific, training. This prediction is empirically validated using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). We provide empirical evidence that locus of control influences participation in training through its effect on workers’ expectations about future wage increases rather than actual wage increases. Our results provide an important explanation for underinvestment in training and suggest that those with an external sense of control may require additional training support.
We analyze workers’ risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpinning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them against future losses. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to demonstrate that risk affinity is associated with more training, implying that, on average, investment risks dominate the insurance benefits of training. Crucially, this relationship is evident only for general training; there is no relationship between risk attitudes and specific training. Thus, consistent with our conceptual framework, risk preferences matter more when skills are transferable – and workers have a vested interest in training outcomes – than when they are not. Finally, we provide evidence that the insurance benefits of training are concentrated among workers with uncertain employment relationships or limited access to public insurance schemes.
We analyze workers’ risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpinning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them against future losses. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to demonstrate that risk affinity is associated with more training, implying that, on average, investment risks dominate the insurance benefits of training. Crucially, this relationship is evident only for general training; there is no relationship between risk attitudes and specific training. Thus, as expected, risk preferences matter more when skills are transferable – and workers have a vested interest in training outcomes – than when they are not. Finally, we provide evidence that the insurance benefits of training are concentrated among workers with uncertain employment relationships or limited access to public insurance schemes.
This study analyses the impact of managers’ risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. We begin by providing nationally representative evidence that managers’ risk-aversion is negatively correlated with the likelihood that their firms engage in any worker training. Using a novel vignette study, we then demonstrate that risk-tolerant and risk-averse decision makers have significantly different training preferences. Risk aversion results in increased sensitivity to turnover risk. Managers who are risk-averse offer less general training and are more reluctant to train workers with a history of job mobility. Adopting a weighting approach to flexibly control for observed differences in the characteristics of risk-averse and risk-tolerant managers, we show that our findings cannot be explained by heterogeneity in either managers’ observed characteristics or the type of firms where they work. All managers, irrespective of their risk preferences, are sensitive to the investment risk associated with training, avoiding training that is more costly or that targets those with less occupational expertise or nearing retirement. This provides suggestive evidence that the risks of training are primarily due to the risk that trained workers will leave the firm (turnover risk) rather than the risk that the benefits of training do not outweigh the costs (investment risk).