energy transitions in small scale regions what we can learn from a regional innovation systems perspective the prevalent theories in the debate on sustainability transitions have been criticised for not sufficiently addressing energy change processes at the local level this paper aims to enhance our understanding of local energy reorganisation processes drawing on the regional innovation systems ris approach we argue that local development dynamics result from the interaction of various subsystems science politics public administration industry finance intermediaries and civil society the analysis of the involved subsystems and their interaction shows how energy transitions are shaped by different individual and organisational actors as well as institutions on the local level empirical evidence from case studies on the german cities of emden and bottrop illustrates our theoretical conceptualisation of energy transitions we conclude by presenting characteristic interaction patterns for energy transition drawn from the two cases

investment under uncertainty heterogeneous beliefs and agency conflicts we develop a structural model to investigate the effects of asymmetric beliefs and agency conflicts on dynamic principal agent relationships optimism has a first order effect on incentives investments and output which could reconcile the private equity puzzle asymmetric beliefs cause optimal contracts to have features consistent with observed venture capital and research and development rd baker ruback and wurgler 2007 ben david graham and harvey 2008 further long term principal agent relationships feature dynamic actions by both parties for example vc projects have salient features such as dynamic staging of the vc s investments progressive vesting of the entrepreneur s stake and the presence of intertemporal milestones or performance targets that must be met for the project to continue observed contracts also feature complex combinations of different types of financial securities with debt and equity like

mainstream economic analysis and the case for accommodation the federal reserve has a dual mandate to foster both full employment and price stability most often these two goals are in alignment so policies that support one objective generally support the other however at times the two aims can be at odds when that happens policies that target one goal may lead to misses on the other one this article argues that taking a balanced approach between competing choices provides a solution that is in agreement with mainstream monetary policy rules

the long term effects of ui extensions on employment the majority of papers analyzing the employment effects of unemployment insurance ui benefit durations focus on the duration of the first unemployment spell in this paper we make two contributions first we use a regression discontinuity design to analyze the long term effects of extensions in ui durations these estimates differ from standard estimates in that they incorporate differences in ui benefit receipt and employment due to recurrent unemployment spells second we derive a welfare formula of ui extensions that incorporates recurrent nonemployment spells

how to weigh unemployment relative to inflation in monetary policy the monetary policy mandate for the federal reserve and of the riksbank are essentially the same and boil down to stabilizing inflation around the inflation target and employment or unemployment around a long run sustainable rate the relative weight on stabilizing unemployment or employment versus stabilizing inflation may be close to one a positive unemployment gap forecast normally calls for a positive inflation gap forecast

relationship banking fragility and the asset liability matching problem we address a fundamental question in relationship banking why do banks that make relationship loans finance themselves primarily with core deposits and when would it be optimal to finance such loans with purchased money we show that not only are relationship loans informationally opaque and illiquid but they also require the relationship between the bank and the borrower to endure in order for the bank to add value however the informational opacity of relationship loans gives rise to endogenous withdrawal risk that makes the bank fragile core deposits are an attractive funding source for such loans because the bank provides liquidity services to core depositors and this diminishes the likelihood of premature deposit withdrawal thereby facilitating the continuity of relationship loans that is we show that banks will wish to match the highest value added liabilities with the highest value added loans and that doing so simultaneously minimizes the bank s fragility owing to withdrawal risk and maximizes the value the bank adds in relationship lending we also examine the impact of interbank competition on the bank s asset liability matching and extract numerous testable predictions

can technology specific deployment policies be cost effective the case of renewable energy support schemes can technology specific deployment policies be cost effective the case of renewable energy support schemes

competitive equilibrium in the credit market under asymmetric information abstract we study a competitive credit market equilibrium in which all agents are risk neutral and lenders a priori unaware of borrowers default probabilities admissible credit contracts are characterized by the credit granting probability the loan quantity the loan interest rate and the collateral required the principal result is that in equilibrium lower risk borrowers pay higher interest rates than higher risk borrowers moreover the lower risk borrowers get more credit in equilibrium than they would with full information no credit is rationed and collateral requirements are higher for the lower risk borrowers

financial intermediation as a beliefs bridge between optimists and pessimists this paper proposes a new framework for understandingnancial intermediation in contrast to previous research we consider a setting in which intermediaries possess no inherent information processing or monitoring advantages instead in an economy with overly optimistic entrepreneurs who require funding from overly skeptical pessimistic investors we show that intermediaries can arise endogenously in such a setting only a rational intermediary will be su ciently optimistic tond it worthwhile to invest in a technology for screening entrepreneurs projects and yet be pessimistic enough to use this technology our framework produces implications consistent with heretofore unexplained stylized facts and a number of others which are as of yet untested

should renewable energy policy be renewable political flexibility brings about trade offs for policy makers aiming to support the deployment of renewable energy sources res on the one hand it allows incorporating new information on ex ante uncertain benefits and costs of res policy on the other hand it may deter res investments this paper scrutinizes how these trade offs play out economically and politically when res policy makers choose the degree of flexibility as well as the instruments to implement flexibility the analysis builds on a theoretical framework distinguishing between flexibility by design and by adjustment it is complemented by a discussion of three case studies res support schemes in germany and the united kingdom and the eu emissions trading scheme theoretical as well as empirical results suggest that the politically chosen degree of flexibility by policy design may be sub optimally low in contrast flexibility by policy adjustment is often excessively high

taxes and bank capital structure this paper shows that a reduction in tax discrimination between debt and equity funding leads to better capitalized financial institutions the paper exploits exogenous variation in the tax treatment of debt and equity created by the introduction of a tax shield for equity the results demonstrate that a more equal treatment of debt and equity increases bank capital ratios driven by an increase in common equity the change also leads to a significant reduction in risk taking for ex ante low capitalized banks overall the findings suggest that tax shields could be a valuable and innovative policy tool for bank regulators

migration theories and evidence an assessment abstract this paper presents a critical survey of theories of migration their welfare and policy implications and their empirical relevance we also develop some extensions to the theory beginning with the harris and todaro ht model in particular the ht model is extended to examine risk averse behaviour within families where the migration of members of families serves to diversify risk the welfare implications of the individual migration decision and government intervention in the form of employment subsidies are examined recent evidence on international migration is presented it is shown that migration does not flow automatically in response to wage differentials characteristics of migrants and the process of self selection are found to be important determinants of the rate of migration

institutional dynamics and technology legitimacy a framework and a case study on biogas technology legitimacy is central for both novel and established technologies to mobilize the resources necessary for growth and survival a loss of legitimacy in turn can have detrimental effects for an industry in this paper we study the rise and fall of technology legitimacy of agricultural biogas in germany over a period of more than 20 years 1990 2012 the field witnessed impressive growth and professionalization for many years and has become one of the key technologies in germany s energy transition in recent years however it has been confronted with major criticism which finally resulted in a substantial cut back of public and political support the aim of our study is twofold in empirical terms we will explain the technology s loss of legitimacy despite its compliance with original policy objectives growth and maturation in theoretical terms we work toward a more general framework to understand technology legitimacy and to explain the institutional dynamics of technological innovation systems

financial development economic growth and convergence clubs abstractto study the role of financial development in economic growth we apply an array of convergence tests designed to capture nonlinear transitional dynamics to real outputs per capita strong evidence of multiple convergence clubs is observed implying that the clubs are formed based on the initial level of real output per capita and average growth rate our empirical results show that the stage of economic growth of each country plays an important role for the composition of the convergence clubs furthermore financial development emerges to be a significant determinant albeit plays differently in the economic growth of each convergence club

an exploration of competitive signalling equilibria with third party information production the case of debt insurance in markets in which sellers know more about product quality than buyers but cannot convey their superior information either by directly issuing costly signals of the spence type or by successfully funding the production of information i suggest another way in which the informational asymmetry problem can be resolved a third party can produce the necessary information at a cost and use it to price a service consumed by the sellers buyers can then observe a seller s choice of service consumption level and be well informed in equilibrium in this framework i construct a model in which a borrower s choice of insurance coverage signals its default probability to lenders and explore the properties of the resulting signalling equilibrium in a variety of cases subsequent to akerlof s provocative paper 1 the analysis of equilibria in markets with asymmetrically informed agents has been the subject of considerable enquiry akerlof s novel insight was the observation that such markets can fail in the sense that the demand at any price is zero this market failure can be prevented however if a priori imperfectly informed buyers of a given product can somehow revise their initial conditional estimates of product quality so that prices are consistent with quality in an equilibrium bhattacharya 2 3 ross 9 and spence 12 13 14 have suggested that one way of achieving this is to allow sellers of the product or service to issue costly signals of the quality offered for sale in a rational equilibrium prospective buyers could use these signals to discriminate accurately between products of differing quality campbell and kracaw 4 have recently suggested another possibility that sellers can make side payments to information producers to acquire the necessary information at a cost and convey it to the market this paper explores yet another distinct way of resolving the information asymmetry problem the market structure considered here involves three parties a group of sellers each aware of the quality of its own product a set of buyers who perhaps satisfy the rational expectations assumption that they are aware of the average quality of the products in the market but are unable to distinguish one seller from the other on the basis of product quality and third party information producers who expend resources to produce information about the quality of each product offered for sale these information producers recover the cost of information acquisition by using their knowledge to structure and price some fixed quality service that they provide to

information reliability and a theory of financial intermediation this paper is an analysis of when it will be beneficial for agents engaged in the production of information to form coalitions the model is cast in a financial market framework thus leading to an identification of conditions sufficient for the existence of financial intermediaries intermediation is shown to improve welfare if informational asymmetries are present and the information generated to rectify these asymmetries is potentially unreliable the usual appeal to transactions costs to explain intermediation is not needed

business models as drivers of the low carbon power system transition a multi level perspective abstract decarbonising the electrical power system holds a critical role in climate change mitigation recent developments in technology are helping change the current centralized paradigm into one of integrated distributed clean energy resources in spite of these developments radical transformation is not occurring at a speed to effectively meet environmental targets mostly due to the incumbent carbon lock in trajectory we argue that business model bm innovation dynamics are key drivers in accelerating the low carbon power system transition often operating irrespective of the underlying technology we combine bm theory with the multi level perspective on sociotechnical transitions to present a useful framework to analyze this potential transition this paper presents the application of this framework characterizing relevant bm dynamics of niche and regime business actors and supporting these with illustrative examples particularly we find that new actors in the distributed energy business are achieving market scale by offering financially innovative bms that do not require upfront costs from customers higher penetrations of renewable energy sources in liberalized electricity markets are destabilizing the historical bm of large centralized utilities through erosion of wholesale prices furthermore a shift towards distributed and dynamic energy resources further challenges incumbents and might bring opportunities for bms focused on active customer participation and social value creation as these tendencies are expected to accelerate we find analyses of bms will have important relevance for future power system transition research

the informational structure of migration decision and migrants self selection abstract we analyze the pattern of migrants self selection in unobservables when there is uncertainty about foreign wages negative selection becomes more likely and a greater dispersion of wages at destination no longer suffices to predict that immigrants will outperform natives

trade with heterogeneous prior beliefs and asymmetric information no trade theorems have shown that new information will not lead to trade when agents share the same prior beliefs this paper explores the structure of no trade theorems with heterogeneous prior beliefs it is shown how different notions of efficiency under asymmetric information ex ante interim ex post are related to agents prior beliefs as well as incentive compatible and public versions of those efficiency concepts these efficiency results are used to characterize necessary and sufficient conditions on agents beliefs for no trade theorems in different trading environments

how does equity capital cost affect bank performance during a financial crisis this article theoretically examines how equity capital cost affects return performance and safety of a bank and how this effect varies across a financial crisis comparing to a normal time when the bank manager s performance reveals the like of higher equity return and the dislike of higher equity risk we derive two main results first an increase in the bank s equity capital cost from an increase of the interest rate of the federal funds results in a reduced loan risk taking at an increased optimal bank interest margin implying better bank performance second by ignoring the dislike we find that the better performance is reinforced during a financial crisis but is reduced during a normal time financial crises and the dislike preference as such contribute a relatively low return and the stability of banking activities

rationales for technology specific res support and their relevance for german policy in order to achieve cost effective res e deployment it is often argued that technology neutral support schemes for renewables are indispensable against this background res e support policies making widely use of technology differentiation in remuneration settings e g across the eu are frequently criticized from a theoretical point of view however in this paper we provide a systematic critique of the technology neutrality concept as a foundation for designing policy support schemes in the res e technology field specifically the main objective of the paper is to scrutinize the arguments for technology neutrality and discuss three conceptual arguments for why technology specific support schemes could in fact help minimize the societal costs of reaching future res e targets we also briefly address different political economy concerns which could constrain the choice of cost effective policy support schemes and that have to be taken into account for economic policy advice for empirical illustration of the key arguments we refer to the case of german res e policy making the central conclusion from this paper is that technology specific res e support schemes may generate significant economic benefits particularly if technology markets work imperfectly and in second best policy settings with additional non internalized market failures

the rise in the disability rolls and the decline in unemployment between 1984 and 2001 the share of nonelderly adults receiving social security disability insurance income di rose by 60 percent to 5 3 million beneficiaries rapid program growth despite improving aggregate health appears to be explained by reduced screening stringency declining demand for less skilled workers and an unforeseen increase in the earnings replacement rate we estimate that the sum of these forces doubled the labor force exit propensity of displaced high school dropouts after 1984 lowering measured u s unemployment by one half a percentage point steady state calculations augur a further 40 percent increase in the rate of di receipt

the effects of extended unemployment insurance over the business cycle evidence from regression discontinuity estimates over 20 years one goal of extending the duration of unemployment insurance ui in recessions is to increase ui coverage in the face of longer unemployment spells although it is a common concern that such extensions may themselves raise nonemployment durations it is not known how recessions would affect the magnitude of this moral hazard to obtain causal estimates of the differential effects of ui in booms and recessions this article exploits the fact that in germany potential ui benefit duration is a function of exact age which is itself invariant over the business cycle we implement a regression discontinuity design separately for 20 years and correlate our estimates with measures of the business cycle we find that the nonemployment effects of a month of additional ui benefits are at best somewhat declining in recessions yet the ui exhaustion rate and therefore the additional coverage provided by ui extensions rises substantially during a downturn the ratio of these two effects represents the nonemployment response of workers weighted by the probability of being affected by ui extensions hence our results imply that the effective moral hazard effect of ui extensions is significantly lower in recessions than in booms using a model of job search with liquidity constraints we also find that in the absence of market wide effects the net social benefits from ui extensions can be expressed either directly in terms of the exhaustion rate and the nonemployment effect of ui durations or as a declining function of our measure of effective moral hazard copyright 2012 oxford university press

the coevolution of the real and financial sectors in the growth process the role of debt and equity changes over time and with the level of development what are these changes and why should they systematically occur across different countries and time periods this article characterizes financial innovation as a dynamic process that both influences and is influenced by the development of the real sector it focuses on the emergence and development of equity markets using a model that allows for growth and for capital accumulation that is financed externally through a combination of debt and equity as an economy develops the aggregate ratio of debt to equity will generally fall yet debt and equity remain complementary sources for the financing of capital investments the results suggest how various government policy actions might affect capital accumulation and equity market activity

what governs the transition to a sustainable hydrogen economy articulating the relationship between technologies and political institutions abstract there is a lack of integrated knowledge on the transition to a sustainable energy system the paper focuses on the relationship between technologies and institutions in the field of hydrogen from the perspective of political theory the paper unfolds four paradigms of governance governance by policy networking governance by government governance by corporate business and governance by challenge and looks into the major line of argument in support of these paradigms and into their possible bias with respect to hydrogen options each of these paradigms reveals an institutional bias in that it articulates specific opportunities for collaboration and competition in order to stimulate the transition to a sustainable hydrogen economy the paper makes the observation that there is a compelling need to reframe fashionable discourse such as the necessary shift from government to governance or from government to market instead specific questions with respect to the impact of guiding policy frameworks on innovation will highlight that neither neutral nor optimal frameworks for policy making exist where competing hydrogen options are at stake the identification of paradigms of governance maybe considered a methodological device for participator policy analysis

bank capital in the crisis it s not just how much you have but who provides it abstract bank capital is the cornerstone of bank regulation and is considered a key determinant of a bank s ability to withstand economic shocks in the area of bank capital regulation the general view is that more bank capital is better irrespective of who provides it in this paper we investigate whether the investment horizon of bank capital providers matters for bank performance during the recent financial crisis we observe that banks with more short term investor ownership have worse stock returns during the crisis further exploration suggests that this is partially because banks with higher short term investor ownership took more risk prior to the crisis but mainly because they experienced higher selling pressure during the crisis our results confirm the economic benefit of bank capital in helping banks to perform better during crises however when we decompose bank capital by the nature of its providers we show that more capital is associated with worse performance when it is provided by short term institutional investors

robust financial contracting and the role of venture capitalists we derive a role for inside investors such as venture capitalists in resolving various agency problems that arise in a multistage financial contracting problem absent an inside investor the choice of securities is unlikely to reveal all private information and overinvestment may occur an inside investor however always makes optimal investment decisions if and only if he holds a fixed fraction contract where he always receives a fixed fraction of the project s payoff and finances that same fraction of future investments this contract also eliminates any incentives of the venture capitalist to misprice securities issued in later financing rounds in this article we develop a model of financial contracting with multiple investment decisions and show how conflicts of interest and informational asymmetries can be effectively resolved by an inside investor i e an investor who not only provides capital but also works closely with the firm monitors it frequently and is generally very well informed about the firm s prospects and investment opportunities venture capitalists are obvious examples of inside investors and their function has been an important motivation for this article banks especially in japan and germany are also involved in monitoring and can be viewed as playing the role of inside investors in this article we examine the potential benefits of inside investors in a context where there are no restrictions beyond limited liability on the type of financial contracts that can be written we address a basic financial contracting problem involving an entrepreneur who has an idea for a project but does not have sufficient capital to fund it an important assumption is that there are several stages in the project s development and that a decision must be made at each stage whether the project should be continued or abandoned if the project is continued the amount of additional capital to be invested must also be determined we assume that the entrepreneur as an insider observes private information about the project s profitability at each stage this information is not

advocates or cartographers scientific advisors and the narratives of german energy transition abstract political debate on energy in germany has been shaped by two historically opposed discourses one pushing for a transition to renewables the other holding on to the status quo scientific policy advice spa has been involved in their evolution from the beginning this paper draws on the advocacy coalition framework and on discourse and narrative theory to study the role of spa in recent german energy policy we explore 1 whether scientific advisors have been members of advocacy coalitions and 2 how their contributions may have interacted with the evolution of the discourses and major narratives we perform a qualitative text analysis of 50 spa reports published between 2000 and 2015 we find that the majority of studies clearly take sides in the debate and that in most cases the reports positions are fully transparent despite the polarization spa provides differentiated information on key aspects of the discourses and alternative design options for policy instruments we conclude that spa contributions have improved the conditions for political consensus and compromise collectively spa studies provide a basis for mapping different policy pathways and their consequences in the future spa should address additional critical issues such as coal phase out and international leadership

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

overconfidence ceo selection and corporate governance we develop a model that shows that an overconfident manager who sometimes makes value destroying investments has a higher likelihood than a rational manager of being deliberately promoted to ceo under value maximizing corporate governance moreover a risk averse ceo s overconfidence enhances firm value up to a point but the effect is nonmonotonic and differs from that of lower risk aversion overconfident ceos also underinvest in information production the board fires both excessively diffident and excessively overconfident ceos finally sarbanes oxley is predicted to improve the precision of information provided to investors but to reduce project investment

bank capital and liquidity creation in asia pacific we calculate liquidity creation for a large sample of commercial banks in 14 asia pacific economies from 2005 to 2012 we find that banks in this region created 7 83 trillion in liquidity in 2012 or approximately 3 24 times the total liquidity created in 2005 large banks and those based in developing asia created the highest liquidity we also investigate the bicausal relationship between liquidity creation and regulatory capital and find that the trade off between the benefits of financial stability induced by enhanced capital requirements and those of higher liquidity creation is applicable to all of the sample banks regardless of bank size and economic region

overconfidence compensation contracts and capital budgeting a risk averse manager s overconfidence makes him less conservative as a result it is cheaper for firms to motivate him to pursue valuable risky projects when compensation endogenously adjusts to reflect outside opportunities moderate levels of overconfidence lead firms to offer the manager flatter compensation contracts that make him better off overconfident managers are also more attractive to firms than their rational counterparts because overconfidence commits them to exert effort to learn about projects still too much overconfidence is detrimental to the manager since it leads him to accept highly convex compensation contracts that expose him to excessive risk

bank capital and lending relationships this paper investigates the mechanisms behind the matching of banks and firms in the loan market and the implications of this matching for lending relationships bank capital and the provision of credit i find that bank dependent firms borrow from well capitalized banks while firms with access to the bond market borrow from banks with less capital this matching of bank dependent firms with stable banks smooths cyclicality in aggregate credit provision and mitigates the effects of bank shocks on the real economy

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

collateral and rationing sorting equilibria in monopolistic and competitive credit markets the authors examine how market structure affects credit allocation under universal risk neutrality and asymmetric information about borrowers they consider both monopolistic and perf ectly competitive banks and examine the role of collateral in each ca se when a bank is a monopolist on the loan side they find collatera l is never used and asymmetric information results in reduced bank le nding under perfect competition collateral has a useful sorting rol e moreover rationing is possible even with collateral availability and perfectly elastic deposit supply in this setting the authors sh ow co signers are valuable social welfare properties of the monopoly and competitive equilibria are also compared copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the effectiveness of non standard monetary policy in addressing liquidity risk during the financial crisis the experiences of the federal reserve and the european central bank abstract a number of studies sought to measure the effects of non standard policy on bank funding markets this paper carries those estimates a step further by looking at the effects of bank funding market stress on the volume of bank lending by separately modeling loan supply and demand we determine how non standard central bank measures affected bank lending by reducing stress in bank funding markets our results suggest that non standard policy measures lowered bank funding volatility in the us and the euro area lower bank funding volatility in turn increased loan supply in both regions contributing to sustained lending activity

a reexamination of mean variance analysis of bank capital regulation abstract the mean variance framework has been used to analyze the effects of bank capital regulation on the asset and bankruptcy risk of insured utility maximizing banks this literature claims that more stringent capital regulation will increase asset risk and can increase bankruptcy risk these conclusions are notable because they are opposite to those obtained for insured value maximizing banks in this paper we show that the utility maximization literature does not support its conclusions regarding the effects of bank capital regulation because it has mischaracterized the bank s investment opportunity set by neglecting the option value of deposit insurance

costly information production equilibria in the bank credit market with applications to credit rationing in this paper we explore the nature of equilibria in an asymmetrically informed bank credit market in which credit applicants know their own intrinsic default risks but potential lenders can discover these default risks only by expending resources to produce information the resolution of informational asymmetries in the capital market is in the contemporary view considered a very important function served by financial intermediaries like commercial banks and in the opinion of some even the primary justification for their existence 17 we therefore focus on how the presence of asymmetric information in particular the response of expected profit maximizing banks to it affects the equilibrium prices and quantities of credit offered in the banking system

immigrant earnings relative to what the importance of earnings function specification and comparison points immigrant relative earnings estimates are sensitive to the choice of comparison point and the specification of earnings non sample mean comparisons borjas 1985 understate relative earnings simple earnings specifications linear education quadratic experience overstate relative earnings for both poorly and well educated immigrants specifications which ignore omitted variables understate the relative earnings of poorly educated immigrants and overstate those of well educated ones although measures of assimilation and changes in immigrant quality are insensitive to earnings specification they indicate strong earnings growth for post 1964 immigrants an overall decrease in immigrant quality and an increase in mexican immigrant quality

lobbying the energiewende assessing the effectiveness of strategies to promote the renewable energy business in germany abstract the article examines the influence of renewable energy companies on the decision making process related to the german energy transition it identifies clusters of different lobbying activities and styles through in depth interviews with 20 stakeholders from policy making and business the research used repertory grid technique in combination with homals multivariate analysis its main findings are first although the big four electric utilities operating on the german energy market still possess wide influence companies of renewable energy have developed from a niche into important players of the energy regime second lobbies by the renewable energy sector are mainly aimed at the legislative framework particularly on the renewable energy sources act and the feed in system third interviewees identified 36 different lobby activities the most effective ones are regular and personal maintenance of contact to politicians lobbying within an association knowledge development with correct information and top down contacting of most powerful politicians fourth the statistical analysis reveals clear distinctions between companies with regards to their lobby strategies which are evaluated differently by stakeholders finally the article concludes that companies have a strong influence on political decision making and together with governmental actors form a policy network that strongly shapes the german energy transition

bank funding modes securitization versus deposits abstract we examine a bank s choice of whether to fund the loans it originates by emitting deposits or to sell the loans to investors with common knowledge of loan quality and laissez faire banking we find that the choice is irrelevant with asymmetric information but without government intervention we find that better quality assets will be sold securitized and poorer quality assets will be funded with deposits public regulation can influence the bank s choice subsidies can cause a bank to favor deposit funding but mutual funds and third party insurers may mitigate the effects of governmental subsidies

job displacement disability and divorce earnings shocks should affect divorce probability by changing a couple s expected gains from marriage we find that the divorce hazard rises after a spouse s job displacement but does not change after a spousal disability this difference casts doubt on a purely pecuniary motivation for divorce following earnings shocks since both types of shocks exhibit similar long run economic consequences furthermore the increase in divorce is found only for layoffs and not for plant closings suggesting that information conveyed about a partner s noneconomic suitability as a mate due to a job loss may be more important than financial losses in precipitating divorce

self selection and the earnings of immigrants reply my 1987 paper addresses a central question in the economics of immigration who are the immigrants it has been traditionally assumed that immigrants are positively selected that is immigrants are more skilled on average than the typical person in the source country one contribution of my theoretical analysis was to show that this assumption is not necessarily consistent with wealth maximizing behavior in fact under some conditions the immigrant flow may be negatively selected my original study focused only on the selection bias caused by immigrants endogenously sorting themselves out of the source country s population 2 guillermina jasso and mark rosenzweig point out that i ignored other types of selection biases in both my theoretical development and empirical framework these additional biases are due to 1 the selective emigration of the foreign born in the united states and 2 the fact that my empirical work was limited to immigrants originating in 41 source countries regarding the first of these points jasso and rosenzweig restate the well known fact that emigration or return migration is an important characteristic of the immigrant experience robert warren and jennifer marks peck 1980 for instance estimate that perhaps as many as 30 percent of immigrants leave the united states within a decade or two after their arrival jasso and rosenzweig however do not examine systematically how the selective emigration of the foreign born affects either the theory or the empirical analysis in essence their criticism simply asserts that selective emigration is likely to cause problems my 1987 paper however already made note of that fact p 538 moreover the biases caused by emigration were an integral part of my earlier critique of the econometric methodology used by most studies of immigrant earnings determination borjas 1985 pp 466 67 what is obviously needed is the generalization of both my theoretical and empirical frameworks to account for the emigration of the foreign born such a generalization however is not provided by jasso and rosenzweig and does not yet exist 3 the second point made by jasso and rosenzweig deals with the empirical results presented in my paper because i limited my analysis to immigrants originating in 41 countries the sample is not representative and serious selection biases may be at work obviously it is always better to use a more representative sample in the empirical analysis the data were limited to 41 source countries because i was concerned not only with immigrant wage levels but also with immigrant wage growth as recorded by the 2 10

the intergenerational effects of worker displacement this article uses variation induced by firm closures to explore the intergenerational effects of worker displacement using a canadian panel of administrative data that follows more than 39 000 father son pairs from 1978 to 1999 we find that children whose fathers were displaced have annual earnings about 9 lower than similar children whose fathers did not experience an employment shock they are also more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social assistance the estimates are driven by the experiences of children whose family income was at the bottom of the income distribution

managerial optimism and earnings smoothing abstract this paper empirically examines how ceo optimism affects earnings smoothing and earnings surprises the main finding is that optimistic managers smooth earnings more than rational managers and are associated with smaller in absolute value earnings surprises a possible theoretical explanation is offered for these results based on a combination of the torpedo effect the innate behavior of optimists and the risk of litigation prosecution for over reporting earnings

destructive effects of constructive ambiguity in risky times unclear bailout policy underinvestment and calls for greater responsibility by bankers are some of the observations from the recent financial crisis the paper explains underinvestment as an inefficient equilibrium under ambiguous bailout policy agents suffer from a lack of information about the insolvency resolution methods the beliefs of bankers regarding whether an insolvent bank is liquidated may differ from those of depositors even if bankers and depositors possess absolutely symmetric information about the economy this disrupts the flow of funds through the banking channel if the investment climate is characterized by high aggregate risk the paper suggests policy implications aimed at a reduction of the anxiety of agents and at aligning their beliefs to restore efficiency