bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Look Behind the (Animated) Pictures. Notes on the Role of the Aesopic Language in Hungarian Animated Film
Authors: Varga Zoltán
Published: April 2016

The essay explores a certain tendency of Hungarian animated film related to a strategy of constructing meaning. The so-called Aesopic language, which can be found in Hungarian animated film, is interested in creating ambiguity, hidden meanings, especially against oppressive political systems. The paper approaches the development of the Aesopic language in Hungarian animated film based on two factors. The first one examines the characteristics of the animated film in general, focusing on the double sense of the animated image. The second one is a historical approach, considering how the Communist regime affected artistic freedom, and how the Aesopic language became general in Central and Eastern Europe during the decades of Communism. After delineating the concept, the essay continues with interpretations of Hungarian animated films produced by the famous Pannonia Film Studio as examples of the Aesopic language. The paper distinguishes between a less and a more direct variant of creating ambiguity, depending on whether the animated films lack or contain explicit references to the Communist system. The group o|f the less direct variant includes Rondino, Changing Times and The Fly, among the examples of the more direct variant we can find Storv about N, Our Holidays and Mind the Steps!.
Poetry in Transmedial Perspective: Rethinking Intermedial Literary Studies in the Digital Age
Authors: Schaefer Heike
Published: April 2016

In the digital age. literary practice proliferates across different media platforms. Contemporary literary texts are written, circulated and rea|d in a variety of media, ranging from traditional print formats to online environments. This essay explores the implications that the transmedial dispersal of literary culture has for intermedial literary studies. If literature no longer functions as a unified single medium (if it ever did) but unfolds in a multiplicity of media, concepts central to intermediality studies, such as media specificity, media boundaries and media change, have to be reconsidered. Taking as its test case the adaptation of E. E. Cummings’s experimental poetry in Alison Clifford’s new media artwork The Sweet Old Etcetera as well as in YouTube clips, the essay argues for a reconceptualization of contemporary literature as a transmedial configuration or network. Rather than think of literature as a single self-contained medium that engages in intermedial exchange and competition with other media, such as film or music, we can better understand how literature operates and develops in the digital age if we recognize the medial heterogeneity and transmedial distribution of literary practice.
Analysis, detection and quantitation of mixed cryoglobulins in HCV infection: brief review and case examples
Authors: Voma Chesinta B. , Levinson Stanley S.
Published: April 2016

Considering the high incidence of cryoglobulins in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection together with the high worldwide prevalence of HCV infection, identification of clinically apparent mixed cryoglobulinemia syndrome is increasingly important as most patients who are identified can now be successfully treated. Different approaches for the detection, analysis and reporting of cryoglobulins have been described and there is a wide variation in results reported, ranging from a qualitative “negative” or “positive”, to a quantitative report including cryoglobulin type and the total protein. Protein and immunofixation (IFE) electrophoresis are generally used to identify and characterize cryoglobulins, as these methods quantify and phenotype. Here, we present a brief review of the literature and demonstrate a case oriented approach for identifying mixed cryoglobulinemia from the preanalytical phase, leading up to and including the analytical phase with characterization by IFE. Most patients with mixed cryoglobulinemia can now be treated with success. Nevertheless, the high cost may limit treatment of those with symptoms unless there is laboratory evidence for mixed cryoglubulinemia. Low levels of cryoglobulins can be associated with severe symptoms; as a result, accurate identification of cryoglobulins may be of increasing importance since clear identification may be a good reason to initiate treatment.
Epilobi Hirsuti Herba Extracts Influence the In Vitro Activity of Common Antibiotics on Standard Bacteria
Authors: Pirvu Lucia , Nicorescu Isabela , Hlevca Cristina , Albu Bujor , Nicorescu Valentin
Published: April 2016

Epilobium genus has been confirmed as an effective source of natural antimicrobials. However, the influence of Epilobi hirsuti herba derived products on usual antibiotics activity has not been studied. In this study, several standardized Epilobi hirsuti herba extracts (EHE) were evaluated in order to asses their potential effects on usual antibiotics tested on standard Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains in vitro. The results emphasized that the bacterial strains ranged from sensitive (MIC values between 50–200 μg GAE mL-1) (S. epidermidis ATCC 12228) to very resistant (E. coli strains), E. faecalis ATCC 29212 being practically immune to EHE. In terms of synergistic interaction, Tetracycline and Ampicillin combinations lead to the most important stimulatory effects, the diameters of the inhibition zone being even 60% bigger compared to the antibiotic alone. Synergistic effects between myricetin(galloyl) derivates and Tetracycline were also revealed on P. aeruginosa and E. coli strains. Together, it clearly demonstrated not only EHE’s own antimicrobial properties, but also their capacity to influence the antimicrobial potency of some common antibiotics. These results could be useful for the area of herbal medicines and as potential candidates in managing microbial resistance, but also for physicians and pharmacists using combined antibacterial therapy.
Reactions of ferrocenyl chalcones with hydrazines and active methylene compounds
Authors: El-Hussieny Marwa , Yosef Hisham Abdallah A. , Mahran Mohamed R.H. , Ibrahim Nabila M.
Published: April 2016

Claisen-Schmidt condensation of ferrocenecarboxaldehyde (2b) with 2-acetylfuran (4) yielded(E)-3-ferrocenyl-1-(2-furyl)prop-2-en-1-one (E-5) together with 1,5-di(2-furyl)-3-ferrocenylpentane-1,5-dione (6). Reactions of the ferrocenyl chalcones3a,band5with hydrazine hydrate, phenyl hydrazine, ethyl acetoacetate, ethyl cyanoacetate and malononitrile, were also studied. Possible reaction mechanisms were discussed and structures of the new products were unambiguously characterized by common analytical and spectroscopic methods.
The Mechanical Properties of the Mo-0.5Ti and Mo-0.1Zr Alloys at Room Temperature and High Temperature Annealing
Authors: Cui Chaopeng , Gao Yimin , Wei Shizhong , Zhang Guoshang , Zhou Yucheng , Pan Kunming , Zhu Xiangwei , Guo Songliang
Published: April 2016

Mo-0.5Ti and Mo-0.1Zr alloys were prepared by powder metallurgy. In Mo-0.5Ti and Mo-0.1Zr alloys, there appears the second-phase particles of Ti2O3 and ZrO2 respectively, each of which can effectively prevent the dislocation activity in the process of plastic deformation. The addition of Zr can increase the strength of molybdenum alloys. Meanwhile, the ZrO2 formed from the alloy element Zr can refine the grains of molybdenum alloys to improve the recrystallization plasticity. After annealing, the tensile strength decreases while the plasticity greatly increases compared to the annealed Mo-0.5Ti and Mo-0.1Zr alloys. With the increase of annealing temperature, both the tensile strength and plasticity of Mo-0.5Ti and Mo-0.1Zr alloys decrease. Compared with pure Mo, after annealing the properties of the Mo-0.5Ti alloy and the plasticity of the Mo-0.1Zr alloy significantly increases.
Preferential Trade Liberalisation, Fiscal Policy Responses and Welfare: A Dynamic CGE Model for Jordan
Authors: Feraboli Omar
Published: April 2016

This paper aims at assessing the effects on the Jordanian economy of the Association Agreement (AA) between Jordan and the European Union (EU). Particular emphasis is placed on the effects on consumer welfare. The EU-Jordan AA was signed in 1997 and entered into force in May 2002. It eliminates progressively tariffs on most industrial goods imported by Jordan from the EU. Custom duties on agricultural goods and processed agricultural products are gradually and only partially eliminated. Trade liberalisation is expected to bring about a positive impact on consumer welfare through lower prices of investment and consumption goods. On the other hand, it reduces government revenue due to foregone tariff revenue. Therefore counteracting fiscal measures are required in order to offset the loss in government revenue. In order to capture intertemporal effects brought about by trade liberalisation on the Jordanian economy, a multisectoral dynamic CGE model is specified and calibrated. Simulation results show that the implementation of the AA raises consumer welfare in Jordan and has positive effects on all macroeconomic variables in the long-run, but it reduces consumption in the short-run.
Vertragswettbewerb im Gesundheitswesen / Double-sided Competition for the German Health Care Market
Authors: Börsch-Supan Axel
Published: April 2016

Germany spends more than 11% of GDP on health care - after the US and Switzerland the third most expensive system in the world. At the same time, healthy life expectancy is just about average among the OECD countries. This indicates that the German health care system suffers from inefficiency. Other OECD countries, notably Sweden, achieve much higher healthy life expectancies at considerably lower costs.

This paper addresses how the efficiency of the German health care system should be improved upon. Our central argument departs from the well-known observation that information about efficient health care procedures and technologies is asymmetric: insurances know better than consumers which doctors and hospital deliver high quality at lower prices. Hence, the role of health insurances as information mediators between consumers and providers is crucial. Thus, on the one hand, health insurances should gain more market power in the provider market, in which insurance companies pay the services of doctors and hospitals, in order to control costs. One the other hand, however, this increased market power in the provider market needs to be counter-balanced by more competition in the insurance market, in which consumers purchase insurance policies. This requires free choice of consumers among insurance contracts with different prices.
Der Mangel an Spenderorganen – Ursachen und Lösungsmöglichkeiten aus ökonomischer Sicht / The Shortage of Transplants – An Economic Analysis of Causes and Possible Solutions
Authors: Breyer Friedrich , Kliemt Hartmut
Published: April 2016

There is an increasing shortage of human organ transplants in Germany. This paper aims at understanding the reasons for that shortage and discusses various ways to alleviate it by changing the rules of donation and procurement. In particular we consider creating adequate incentives for hospitals and individual donors to participate in the process. In Section 2 we provide a stylized account of the nature and extent of organ shortage in Germany in terms of some key data. Then, in Section 3 we will turn to the incentives of hospitals and their employees, in particular those of intensive care units. When they intend to participate in the process of procuring cadaveric human organ transplants, they may face some rather severe obstacles. In Section 4 we turn to the role of potential organ donors and their families. We discuss different strategies to increase consent to a donation of organs after brain-death has been diagnosed. We particularly consider monetary and other incentives as well as the introduction of the presumedconsent rule. In Section 5 we conclude that organ shortage is due not to natural constraints but to inappropriate social institutions. Introducing a presumed consent rule, reciprocity in organ allocation, better payments for hospitals and for donors are proposed as potential remedies.
Kapitaldeckung in der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung: Wer bezahlt den Übergang? / Funding Social Health Insurance: Who Pays for the Transition?
Authors: Felder Stefan , Fetzer Stefan
Published: April 2016

The double ageing of the population leads to income redistribution from future to present generations as net payments to social health insurance are negative at young age and positive at old age. Economists arguing in favour of flat health insurance premiums combined with ageing provisions often neglect the transition from the pay-as-you-go to funded system. Using a generational accounting approach we analyze a reform to funded premiums, taking into account the transition. Furthermore, we implement a tax-transfer scheme designed to protect low income persons facing higher payments in the premium scheme.

Our calculations reveal that under the current pay-as-you-go system German social health insurance burdens future generations by almost 30 percent of GDP. Funding could reduce this burden to 5 percent of GDP but would involve higher payments up to 700 Euro p.a. for the present generations. A delay of the reform would increase the burden for future generations again and benefit baby boomers born before 1970. We conclude from a public-choice perspective that it will be difficult to implement even a delayed reform to a more funded health insurance system.
Medizinisch-technischer Fortschritt und altersspezifische Gesundheitsausgaben / Medical Progress and Age-specific Expenditure on Health Care
Authors: Ried Walter
Published: April 2016

This paper investigates the impact of population aging, driven by medical progress, upon agespecific expenditure on health care. In a model set up in discrete time, individuals at each age may catch a lethal disease which, upon receiving appropriate medical treatment, nevertheless involves a mortality risk. The incidence of lethal diseases, the associated survival probability conditional upon treatment, and health care expenditure conditional upon health status may all depend on an individual’s history of health status in the past.

Medical progress is taken to involve an increase in the survival probability of a specified lethal disease. First, this produces a direct effect on age-specific health care expenditure to the extent that progress affects the cost of treatment of the disease. Second, indirect effects may also arise relating to individuals who, having survived the disease at some prior age, change the structure of individuals alive at current age. Specifically, these “new survivors” may influence age-specific expenditure either through changes in the incidence of lethal diseases or in the associated treatment cost. The sign of an indirect effect crucially depends on health care expenditure for “new survivors” relative to their peers.

The analysis yields a number of general results with respect to the impact of medical progress on the age profile of health care expenditure. For example, both compression of morbidity and expansion of morbidity are hypotheses which relate to “new survivors” such that they fail to account for the total effect of progress on age-specific expenditure.
Umverteilungseffekte in der Finanzierung von Gesundheitsleistungen / Redistribution Effects of Health Care Financing
Authors: Buchner Florian , Deppisch Rebecca , Wasem Jürgen
Published: April 2016

Health care systems are financed through a mixture of different components: taxes, contributions to social health insurance, premiums to private health insurance, out of pocket payments by patients. These components can be combined differently leading to specific effects of interpersonal redistribution. This can be compared between different countries. In such a comparison the redistributional impact of the German health care systems is rather regressive - which is basically caused by the opportunity for people with high income to leave social health insurance. In comparison to a health insurance system with risk rated premiums, financing of the German social health insurance leads to interpersonal redistribution from higher to lower income, from the young to the elderly, from healthy to sick and from singles to families with children. The pay-as-you-go character of the system leads especially in combination with an aging population and technological change to burden for future generations. In comparison to a system in which each region finances its own health care expenditures, there are also considerable interregional redistributions. The financing system in Germany is not conceptually consistent. Reform proposals (unified health insurance for all; flat rate premiums) tackle these inconsistencies.
Health and the Decision to Invest in Education
Authors: Schneider Brit S. , Schneider Udo , Ulrich Volker
Published: April 2016

The paper analyses the relationship between health and education in a two period human capital framework. The resulting substitution and investment effects between health and advanced training work in opposite direction and leave open questions for the empirical part. As econometric model we use a random effects probit model for panel data. Our data consist of 322 individuals for the two years 2004 and 2006. Thereby, we take into account that self-reported measures of health are usually vulnerable to a reporting bias due to anticipation and measurement errors. Estimation results show a dominant substitution effect between different levels of education, indicating that good health implies higher learning efficiency so that the same income can be achieved with lower investment in advanced training. In contrast, we find a dominant investment effect within an educational level, indicating that better health leads individuals with higher education to invest more in additional training.
Precautionary Saving and Income Uncertainty in Germany – New Evidence from Microdata
Authors: Bartzsch Nikolaus
Published: April 2016

This paper uses microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) to analyse the importance of precautionary saving under income uncertainty. In a cross-section of households, wealth in 2002 is regressed on alternative measures of income uncertainty. In addition to the usual controls, risk aversion is also taken into account. When using net financial wealth, precautionary saving is statistically significant and economically quite important. Precautionary net financial wealth is estimated to make up, on average, around 20% of total aggregate net financial wealth. Unlike net financial wealth, housing wealth is not used as a buffer stock against income uncertainty, the most likely reason being its illiquidity in Germany. Not controlling for risk aversion leads to an overestimation of precautionary wealth. This result contradicts the findings of Fuchs-Schündeln and Schündeln (2005) who suggest that, owing to self-selection, not controlling for risk aversion results in a significant reduction in aggregate precautionary wealth holdings.
Demand Elasticities for Mobile Telecommunications in Austria
Authors: Dewenter Ralf , Haucap Justus
Published: April 2016

This paper analyses price elasticities in the Austrian market for mobile telecommunications services using data on firm specific tariffs in the period between January 1998 and March 2002. As a novelty compared to existing studies dynamic panel data regressions are used to estimate short-run and long-run demand elasticities for business customers and for private consumers with both postpaid contracts and prepaid cards.

We find that business customers have a higher elasticity of demand than private consumers, where postpaid customers tend to have a higher demand elasticity than prepaid customers. Also demand is as expected more elastic in the long run. In addition, the paper also provides estimates for firm-specific demand elasticities which range from -0.47 to -1.1.
Der Beschäftigungsbeitrag kleiner und mittlerer Unternehmen nach der EU-Definition / The Employment Contribution of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises According to the EU-definition
Authors: Engel Dirk , Trax Michaela
Published: April 2016

Statements emphasizing the major contribution of the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) for net job creation are quite frequent. Concerning the current definition of SMEs provided by the European Commission (EC), this paper makes a first attempt to approximate SMEs’ contribution to net employment change based on the IAB-Establishment Panel Data over the years 1998 to 2005 for the whole private economy. Due to sufficient data, independent one-plant firms with less than 250 employees may approximate the group of SMEs according at best. Comparisons with the firm-level Amadeus database validate the suitability of the IAB-establishment panel data for calculation of the SMEs’ employment share, as long as one controls for the establishments’ independence status. The employment share lies about fifty percent. As a matter of fact, the employment share of affiliated SMEs increases over time. Furthermore, independent small plants do not show higher net employment change rates than neither affiliated plants nor middle-sized and large plants. The results reinforce once again the impression that empirical evidence for the assumed superiority of SMEs, is very weak. Further research should mention the role of ownership and firms venturing on the level of firm as well as for the economy at all in more detail.
Survivor Benefits and the Gender-Related Tax Differential in Public Pension Schemes: Observations from Germany
Authors: Werding Martin
Published: April 2016

As a result of fundamental changes in marriage behaviour and the typical division of labour between married spouses, the traditional form of providing survivor benefits within public pension schemes could now be seen as inequitable. Since these non-contributory benefits usually substitute for individual pension entitlements based on the surviving spouse’s own contributions, they can also lead to incentive effects that appear to be far from optimal. In particular, they may weaken work incentives for married women with some degree of labour-force attachment. The present paper highlights this problem referring to institutional details and empirical results related to Germany and shows how it could be resolved by jointly annuitizing a given couple’s pension entitlements. Problems of transition, with the potential for a Pareto-improvement, are neglected.
The Effect of Reputation on Selling Prices in Auctions
Authors: Grund Christian , Gürtler Oliver
Published: April 2016

It is often argued in economics that building a reputation for trustworthiness could help individuals or firms to mitigate or even overcome problems of contractual incompleteness. In this paper, we use data from the German eBay website to test whether a seller’s bad reputation has an effect on selling prices. For auctions of popular DVDs at eBay we do indeed find evidence for this hypothesis. We show that an increase in the share of negative ratings of one percentage point decreases the selling price by about 4 per cent. The number of negative ratings, in contrast, does not affect the selling price significantly. Hence, bidders on the eBay marketplace seem to concentrate on relative rather than on absolute measures of reputation. Further, we challenge the recommendation that it is profitable for eBay sellers to let their auction end in the evening, when many potential buyers are supposed to be online. We find that prices are relatively lower in the evening. This may be due to a much higher supply of DVDs in the evening.
The Hausman Test Statistic can be Negative even Asymptotically
Authors: Schreiber Sven
Published: April 2016

We show that under the alternative hypothesis the Hausman chi-square test statistic can be negative not only in small samples but even asymptotically. Therefore in large samples such a result is only compatible with the alternative and should be interpreted accordingly. Applying a known insight from finite samples, this can only occur if the different estimation precisions (often the residual variance estimates) under the null and the alternative both enter the test statistic. In finite samples, using the absolute value of the test statistic is a remedy that does not alter the null distribution and is thus admissible. Even for positive test statistics the relevant covariance matrix difference should be routinely checked for positive semi-definiteness, because we also show that otherwise test results may be misleading. Of course the preferable solution still is to impose the same nuisance parameter (i.e., residual variance) estimate under the null and alternative hypotheses, if the model context permits that with relative ease. We complement the likelihood-based exposition by a formal proof in an omitted-variable context, we present simulation evidence for the test of panel random effects, and we illustrate the problems with a panel homogeneity test.
Introduction to the Special Issue on Agent-Based Models for Economic Policy Advice
Authors: LeBaron Blake , Winker Peter
Published: April 2016

This special issue of the Journal of Economics and Statistics is devoted to the use of agent-based models for economic policy advice. It presents a collection of research papers in different fields of applications. Special emphasis is laid on discussing the potential and possible limitations of agent-based models for economic policy advice. The editorial provides an overview on the role of agent-based modeling in economic policy referring also to the papers presented. Furthermore, it highlights the strength of the approach, i.e., the explicit microfoundation and the modeling of heterogenous agents. Finally, we also report on current limitations of the method with regard to economic policy advice and point at some areas deserving further research.
Multi-Agent Transport Simulations and Economic Evaluation
Authors: Nagel Kai , Grether Dominik , Beuck Ulrike , Chen Yu , Rieser Marcel , Axhausen Kay W.
Published: April 2016

Tolls are frequently discussed policies to reduce traffic in cities. However, road pricing measures are seldom implemented due to high investments and unpopularity. Transportation planning tools can support planning authorities by solving those problems if they take into account the following aspects:

– Demographic attributes like income and time constraints

– Time reactions to the policy

– Schedule changes of population’s individuals during the whole day

Our approach uses multi-agent simulations to model and simulate full daily plans. Each of our agents has a utility function that appraises the performance of a typical, microscopically simulated day. The sum of all utility changes to a policy change can be interpreted as the change in the system’s welfare thus the economic evaluation of a measure straightforward.

The approach is tested with travel behavior of the Zurich metropolitan region in Switzerland. Several tolling schemes are investigated. It is shown that the simulation can be used to model travelers’ reactions to time-dependent tolls in a way most existing transportation planning tools are not able to do. It is demonstrated that route adjustment only, as is done in many traditional transport planning packages, results in no economic gains from the tolls. As time-dependent tolls are a much-debated subject in transportation politics, the ability to fully model such tolls and the reactions of travelers may help to find better toll schemes. In a world where individuals have more and more freedom to schedule their daily plans, agent-based simulations offer an intuitive way to research complex topics with lots of interdependencies.
The Use of Agent-Based Financial Market Models to Test the Effectiveness of Regulatory Policies
Authors: Westerhoff Frank H.
Published: April 2016

Models with heterogeneous interacting agents have proven to be quite successful in the past. For instance, such models are able to mimic the dynamics of financial markets quite well. The goal of our paper is to explore whether this approach may offer new insights into the working of certain regulatory policies such as transaction taxes, central bank interventions and trading halts. Although this strand of research is rather novel, we argue that agent-based models may be used as artificial laboratories to improve our understanding of how regulatory policy tools function.
Who Does a Currency Transaction Tax Harm More: Short-Term Speculators or Long-Term Investors?
Authors: Demary Markus
Published: April 2016

We propose a novel heterogeneous interacting agents model in which traders are allowed to select endogenously between two different forecasting models and are moreover allowed to be short-term speculators or long-term investors. Within this model framework we study the effects of currency transaction taxes on exchange rate volatility and traders’ behavior measured by their population fractions. The numerical analysis yields the result that these taxes reduce the variance of exchange rate returns, but increase that kurtosis.Moreover it does not lead to a reduction in the misalignment. The second result is, the tax harms short-term speculation in favor of long-term investments, while it also harms trading rules based on economic fundamentals in favor to trend-extrapolating trading rules. But these results are only valid if agents trade very aggressively. Otherwise taxation is not necessary.
Monetary and Fiscal Policy Analysis With an Agent-Based Macroeconomic Model
Authors: Haber Gottfried
Published: April 2016

Macroeconomic policy analysis is a challenge for agent-based models because these types of model are generally much elaborated on the specific market levels for partial (micro) markets, but have been of limited use for macroeconomic policy issues due to calibration and “model closure” issues.Moreover, macroeconomic policy measures at a high level of aggregation, such as general fiscal policy and monetary policy, tend to include several microeconomic aspects determined by the macroeconomic policy makers (i.e. the specific process of money transmission, budget constraints within/for the public sector, etc.), which are not usually captured by agent-based models with an emphasis on microfoundation. Thus, a fully-specified macroeconomic agent-based model, AS1, is applied in this paper. Specifically, the monetary sector is modeled in detail, and both the central bank and the public sector are set up as separate agents with their own expectations and behavior. The paper has two aims: (a) to show that economic policy may be analyzed in this context with more elaborate expectation formation mechanisms than in traditional models, and (b) to demonstrate that this might change the assessment of policy effectiveness. Two illustrative examples for monetary and fiscal policies are presented with different levels of rationality and differences in the expectation formation process.
The Impact of September 11th, 2001 on the Employment Prospects of Arabs and Muslims in the German Labor Market
Authors: Braakmann Nils
Published: April 2016

This paper examines whether the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001 have influenced the job prospects of persons from predominantly Muslim countries in the German labor market. The paper uses a large, representative database of the German working population drawn from administrative sources and forms treatment and control groups based on current nationality. Evidence from regression-adjusted difference-in-differences estimates, estimated by piecewise constant exponential duration models, indicates that 9/11 did not cause a severe decline in job prospects for individuals with a nationality from a predominantly Muslim country. This result is robust when looking at Turks, individuals with a nationality from an Arab country and individuals from Non-Arab, but predominantly Muslim countries relative to a number of control groups. It is also in line with prior evidence from Sweden and England.
Labour Market Institutions and the Employment Intensity of Output Growth
Authors: Flaig Gebhard , Rottmann Horst
Published: April 2016

This paper deals with the effects of labour market institutions on labour market performance. We analyse as an indicator for the labour intensity of output growth the employment threshold (the minimum growth rate of output necessary to keep employment constant). We show for a sample of 17 OECD countries for the period 1971 to 2002 that the strictness of employment protection raises the employment threshold in all econometric specifications. A higher wage bargaining co-ordination and a higher tax wedge reduce also the labour intensity of production, although the effects are not in all econometric specifications significant
Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment in Germany – The Last Five Decades
Authors: Heineck Guido , Riphahn Regina T.
Published: April 2016

Over the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve “equality of opportunity”, i.e. to guarantee all pupils independent of parental background equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields that Germany features particularly low intergenerational mobility with respect to educational attainment. This study investigates the development in intergenerational education mobility in Germany for the birth cohorts 1929 through 1978 with respect to secondary school attainment. We test whether the impact of parental educational background on child educational outcomes changed over time. In spite of massive public policy interventions and education reforms our results yield no significant reduction in the role of parental educational background for child outcomes over the last decades.
How Can Scholarship Institutions Foster the Return of Foreign Students?
Authors: Henseler Miriam , Plesch Joachim
Published: April 2016

We investigate the return decision of students from developing and transition countries who studied in Germany and received support from a scholarship institution. Using a discrete time duration analysis and controlling for economic, political and institutional determinants, we find that individual factors, in particular age and time spent in the host country, have a crucial impact on the return decision. We propose selection criteria and proper contractual arrangements that are liable to induce students to return, thereby fostering the economic development in their home countries.Moreover, we analyze the impact of cultural differences between home and host country on the return decision. Especially graduates from Africa seem to consider cultural differences when deciding whether and when to return.
Rentenreform und Rentenzugangsentscheidung – Eine numerische Gleichgewichtsanalyse / Pension Reform and Endogenous Retirement – a Computable General Equilibrium Analysis
Authors: Kallweit Manuel
Published: April 2016

The paper presents a numerical general equilibrium model in which agents decide about their retirement age. In this context policy reforms like an increase of the normal retirement age, higher discounts for early retirement or the introduction of flat or minimum pensions are simulated. While future generations benefit from the first two reforms, they suffer from the latter. There are three central findings: First, higher discounts have a stronger effect on the retirement decision than an increase in normal retirement age. Second, the timing of retirement is significantly affected by an introduction of flat pensions. Third, models with an explicit retirement decision can lead to different policy implications compared to models in which retirement age is exogenous.
What Determines Household Saving Behavior
Authors: Schunk Daniel
Published: April 2016

Saving decisions are complex, since there are many concurrent motives for saving a portion of one’s income. However, while the existing literature covers all of these motives, most contributions select only one of them as a focus and relegate the others to the background by making simplifying assumptions about them. While the focus on only one saving motive is vital for many insights on aggregate saving behavior, this paper argues that further insights relevant to policy can be gained by relaxing this assumption. Using data from a random sample of German households and from federal official statistics, I explain how much people save under the explicit assumption that various different saving motives co-exist. The findings show that heterogeneity in saving behavior is systematically related to the importance that households attach to different co-existing saving motives. This suggests that policy reforms that change the importance of certain saving motives in the eyes of private households might influence their saving decisions.
Geringverdiener: Wem und wie gelingt der Aufstieg? / Low-Wage Earners: Who Manages to Reach Higher Wage Levels?
Authors: Schank Thorsten , Schnabel Claus , Stephani Jens
Published: April 2016

Using representative linked employer-employee data of the German Federal Employment Agency, this paper analyzes to which extent full-time employees who earned low wages (less than two-thirds of the median wage) in 1998/99 were able to earn higher wages in the following years, and which factors play a role in this context. It is shown that just one out of seven of these low-wage earners was able to earn wages above the low wage threshold in 2005. Bivariate probit estimations with endogenous selection indicate that younger and better qualified low-wage earners record a higher probability of getting higher wages, whereas women are less successful. In addition, this probability shows a significant relationship with the size and the employment structure of the establishment. Moving from one establishment to another is an important instrument for leaving low-wage employment.
The Purpose of Remittances: Evidence from Germany
Authors: Bauer Thomas , Sinning Mathias
Published: April 2016

This paper examines the purpose of remittances using individual data of migrants in Germany. Particular attention is paid to migrants’ savings and transfers to family members in the home country. Our findings indicate that migrants who intend to stay in Germany only temporarily have a higher propensity to save and save larger amounts in their home country than permanent migrants. A similar picture emerges when considering migrants’ payments to family members abroad. The results of a decomposition analysis indicate that temporary and permanent migrants seem to have different preferences towards sending transfers abroad, while economic characteristics and the composition of households in home and host countries are less relevant.
Worker Remittances and Growth: The Physical and Human Capital Channels
Authors: Ziesemer Thomas H.W.
Published: April 2016

Remittances may have an impact on economic growth through channels to physical and human capital. We estimate an open economy model of these two channels consisting of seven equations using the general method of moments with heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation correction (GMM-HAC) with pooled data for four different samples of countries receiving remittances in 2003. The countries with per capita income below $ 1200 benefit most from remittances in the long run because they have the largest impact of remittances on savings. Their changes in remittances account for about 2%of the steady-state level of GDP per capita when compared to the counterfactual of having no changes of remittances. Their ratio of the steady-state growth rates with and without changes of remittances is 1.39. Transitional gains are higher than the steady-state gains only for the human capital variables of this sample. As savings react much more strongly than investment an important benefit of remittances is that less debt is incurred and less debt service is paid than without remittances. All effects are much weaker for the richer countries.
The Political Economy of Refugee Migration
Authors: Czaika Mathias
Published: April 2016

This article examines the driving forces of the magnitude, composition and duration of refugee movements caused by conflict and persecution. The decision to seek temporary or permanent refuge in the region of origin or in a more distant asylum destination is based on inter-temporal optimization. We find that asylum seeking in Western countries is rather a phenomenon of comparatively less persecuted people. In an attempt to reduce their respective asylum burdens, Western countries and host countries in the region of origin are likely to end up in a race to the bottom of restrictive asylum policies. Alternatively, this study shows that, under certain circumstances, proactive refugee-related aid transfers are an effective instrument to relieve Western countries from asylum pressure.
Can a Task-Based Approach Explain the Recent Changes in the German Wage Structure?
Authors: Antonczyk Dirk , Fitzenberger Bernd , Leuschner Ute
Published: April 2016

This paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the task-based approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition of the changes in the entire wage distribution between 1999 and 2006 into the separate effects of personal characteristics and task assignments. In line with the literature, we find a noticeable increase of wage inequality between 1999 and 2006. The decomposition results show that the changes in personal characteristics explain some of the increase in wage inequality whereas the changes in task assignments strongly work towards reducing wage inequality. The coefficient effect for personal characteristics works towards an increase in wage inequality at the top of the wage distribution. The coefficient effect for the task assignments on the contrary shows an inverted U-shaped pattern. We conclude that altogether the task-based approach can not explain the recent increase of wage inequality in Germany.
The Impact of Innovation on Employment in Small and Medium Enterprises with Different Growth Rates
Authors: Zimmermann Volker
Published: April 2016

This article examines the impact of innovation on employment growth in innovating small and medium enterprises. In contrast to existing studies, which typically use the least squares estimation technique, quantile regressions were carried out to analyse the data. This method allows one to examine the effects of innovation at any desired point on the distribution function - for example, in firms experiencing positive or negative growth - providing a more complete picture of the relationship between innovation and employment growth than the standard method of viewing deviations in the average effect. The key finding of the study is that innovation has a positive effect on employment in both growing and shrinking small and medium enterprises. In addition, innovation has a much stronger impact on employee headcounts in companies that are already experiencing strong growth than in their slower growing or shrinking counterparts. When differentiating between product and process innovations, the analysis shows that the introduction of new or improved processes has a larger impact on employment than product innovations. Thus, positive employment effects of innovations are not restricted to narrow segments of the economy. Economic policy aimed at bolstering the innovative strength of firms is thus a strong encouragement to employment on a broad basis.
Work Effort During and After Employment Probation: Evidence from German Personnel Data
Authors: Pfeifer Christian
Published: April 2016

The degree of employment protection affects employment flows as well as work effort of employees. Whereas the former aspect has been analysed in many studies, the impact of employment protection on work effort has been analysed in few recent studies. Theory predicts that employment protection reduces work effort because employee shirking cannot be that easily punished by the firm, which decreases the separation probability and increases the expected utility for a shirker in efficiency wage models. Personnel records of a German company are used to assess the impact of lower employment protection during probation on worker absenteeism as a proxy for work effort. The main finding is that new white-collar workers are on average more than 50 percent less likely to be absent and have on average more than 60 percent fewer absent working days during the three months probation period compared to the nine months period afterwards. These relative effects differ only slightly between the genders and between different age and educational groups.
Human Capital Externalities and Growth of High- and Low-Skilled Jobs
Authors: Südekum Jens
Published: April 2016

Human capital is unequally distributed across cities or regions within a country. The way how the spatial distribution of human capital evolves over time sheds light on the strength of concentration forces for high-skilled workers, such as localised increasing returns to human capital. In this paper I analyse the impact of human capital on local employment growth for Western German regions (1977-2006). Two main empirical facts are established: “Skilled cities” in Western Germany grow faster. At the same time there is convergence of human capital shares across cities, i.e., high-skilled workers do not increasingly concentrate in space. Whereas the first fact (the “smart city hypothesis”) similarly holds in Germany and in the US, there is a striking difference when it comes to the second fact. Some researchers have found an opposite trend of human capital divergence across US metropolitan areas. My findings suggest that human capital exhibits a different spatial trend in different countries. I present a theoretical model which shows that the spatial convergence trend does not imply that concentration forces for high-skilled workers are absent in Western Germany, but only that they are relatively weak compared to countervailing dispersion forces. I further discuss some reasons that may explain the differences between Western Germany and the US. I emphasise the role of the tax system and the impact of pro-dispersive regional policy in Europe.
Institutional Determinants of School Efficiency and Equity: German States as a Microcosm for OECD Countries
Authors: Woessmann Ludger
Published: April 2016

Cross-country evidence on student achievement might be hampered by omitted country characteristics such as language or legal differences. This paper uses cross-state variation in Germany, whose sixteen states share the same language and legal system, but pursue different education policies. Education production function models are estimated using state-level PISA-E data, where possible pooling three subjects and three waves to obtain up to 138 test-score observations. The same results found previously across countries hold within Germany:Higher mean student performance is associated with central exams, private school operation, and socio-economic background, but not with spending, while higher equality of opportunity is associated with reduced tracking. In models that pool German states with OECD countries and combine up to 54 state and country observations, these institutional determinants do not differ significantly between the sample of German states and the sample of OECD countries, indicating that the existing cross-country evidence is not substantially biased by unobserved country-specific factors.