bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
On Interaction Effects: The Case of Heckit and Two-Part Models
Authors: Frondel Manuel , Vance Colin 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Interaction effects capture the impact of one explanatory variable on the marginal effect of another explanatory variable. To explore interaction effects, so-called interaction terms are typically included in estimation specifications. While in linear models the effect of a marginal change in the interaction term is equal to the interaction effect, this equality generally does not hold in non-linear specifications (Ai/Norton 2003). This paper provides for a general derivation of interaction effects in both linear and non-linear models and calculates the formulae of the interaction effects resulting from Heckman’s sample selection model as well as the Two- Part Model, two regression models commonly applied to data with a large fraction of either missing or zero values in the dependent variable. Drawing on a survey of automobile use from Germany, we argue that while it is important to test for the significance of interaction effects, their size conveys limited substantive content. More meaningful, and also more easy to grasp, are the conditional marginal effects pertaining to two variables that are assumed to interact.
Ökonometrie vs. Projektdesign: Lehren aus der Evaluation eines Modellprojekts zur Umsetzung des Workfare-Konzepts
Authors: Schneider Hilmar , Uhlendorff Arne , Zimmermann Klaus F. 
Published: April 2016

Summary
A common problem of welfare states consists of a high unemployment risk for low-skilled workers. This is often attributed to a lack of jobs for the low-skilled, but it may as well be caused by a lack of incentives to work. Low-skilled workers are easily substitutable and therefore have little bargaining power. Hence, they are typically dependent on low-paid jobs. This may create disincentives towork, if the achievable marketwage does not sufficiently exceed the welfare level. Workfare could be an efficient strategy to overcome such disincentives by introducing a work requirement for unemployed welfare recipients. In our paper we investigate the importance of such a supply side policy.
We evaluate a pilot workfare project of a Berlin city community to integrate young people in social assistance into the labor market. Reference data are generated in collaboration with the German Employment Office. The participation effect is found to be positive and of relevant size, but not statistically significant. This indicates that selection biases detected in the allocation process of individuals to the program can be adjusted by econometric techniques, but only at the prize of reduced significance levels. Given the small sample sizes of pilot projects this calls for social experiments in controlled project designs.
Labor Market Effects of Trade and FDI – Recent Advances and Research Gaps
Authors: Pflüger Michael , Blien Uwe , Möller Joachim , Moritz Michael 
Published: April 2016

Summary
The last decade has been shaped by dramatic developments in international trade, international investment and production, both in terms of the scale of events and in terms of their qualitative nature. Intriguing questions have been thrown up concerning the labor market impact of these developments, notably welfare issues (the evolution of real wages, employment and unemployment), the distribution of income (the wage structure) and employment volatility. Path-breaking innovations in the theories of trade, location and the multinational firm allow a fresh look at these labor market effects. This paper takes stock of these theoretical innovations and contrasts these with the recent empirical research efforts to uncover the labor market implications of trade and FDI. We identify research gaps and highlight promising avenues for future research.
What Determines Wage Inequality Among Young German University Graduates?
Authors: Braakmann Nils 
Published: April 2016

Summary
This paper investigates the gender wage gap among university graduates in their first job and five to six years into their careers using a representative survey among German university graduates. Results from standard decomposition techniques show that up to 83%of an initial 24% earnings disadvantage for women in the first job can be attributed to differences in endowments that are fixed at the time of labor market entry. Of these, fields of study play a dominant role and explain up to 70%of the earnings differential. Adding employer characteristics raises the explained part of the differential to 96%. The importance of unexplained factors increases after five to six years where 40% of the earnings gap remain unexplained even when controlling for detailed experience and employer characteristics.
A Coefficient of Correlation Based on Ratios of Ranks and Anti-ranks
Authors: Tarsitano Agostino , Lombardo Rosetta 
Published: April 2016

SummaryRank association is a fundamental tool to express dependence for ordinal data. Measures of rank correlation have been developed in several contexts for more than a century and we were able to cite more than thirty of these coefficients, from simple ones to relatively complicated definitions involving one or more systems of weights. However, only a few of these can actually be considered reasonable measures of concordance/discordance. The main drawback with the vast majority of coefficients is their resistance-to-change which appears to be of limited value for the purposes of rank comparisons that are intrinsically robust. In this article, a new non-parametric correlation coefficient is defined that is based on ratios of two ranks. In comparing it with existing coefficients, it was found to be extremely sensitive to permutation patterns.We have illustrated the potential improvement that our index may provide in economic contexts by comparing published results with those obtained through the use of this new index. The success that we have had suggests that our index may have important applications wherever the discriminatory power of the rank correlation coefficient ought to be particularly strong.
On the Shoulders of Giants: Tracing Back the Intellectual Sources of the Current Debate on “GDP and Beyond” to the 19th Century
Authors: Moore Nils aus dem , Schmidt Christoph M. 
Published: April 2016

Summary
An eternal motive of human existence is the search for guidance.While values and beliefs retain their high relevance, today’s enlightened societies also tend to rest their aspirations and decisions on the actual facts and on a sober assessment of possible courses of events emerging from different choices. Given the complexity of modern life, it is by now well understood that this strategy requires objective, comprehensive and accessible statistical reporting. Today, the desire to provide such a valuable basis for individual decisions and policy-making finds one of its most important expressions in the international debate on “GDP and beyond”. In contrast to similar efforts displayed in previous decades, the current projects emphasize sustainability issues and focus on the accessibility of the information, using modern tools of measurement and presentation. Yet, there is ample evidence that even by the mid-19th century economists aspired to use the objectifying power of statistical analysis as an instrument to improve policy-making and to achieve societal progress. Many of the approaches entertained today have thus to be viewed as an extension of attempts started at that time.
Recurrent Price Index Problems and Some Early German Papers on Index Numbers
Authors: Lippe Peter Michael von der 
Published: April 2016

Summary
With Laspeyres, Paasche and other authors such as Drobisch and Lehr, Germany made quite a promising start in index theory in the last decades of the 19th century. However, it soon lost ground after this period, which is described in this paper. The focus is not on biographies but on controversies where these persons acted as opponents and developed the views for which they are well known. The issues selected are primarily those which are still interesting and controversial today, e. g. the merits and demerits of certain index formulas, the definition and updating of weights, “pure” price comparison vs. chain indices etc. However, in order to aid a better understanding of how Laspeyres etc. arrived at their index formulas and views about the purposes index numbers should serve, some attention is also given to the typical disputes and prejudices of that time (e. g. regarding inflation under the regime of a gold currency).
Unemployment Compensation and Wages: Evidence from the German Hartz Reforms
Authors: Arent Stefan , Nagl Wolfgang 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Using the introduction of fixed unemployment assistance in Germany in 2005 as a unique natural experiment, we find strong evidence that decreased unemployment compensation has an adverse effect on wages. We use micro panel data to identify and estimate the effect of this structural break. In eastern and western Germany, the relative effect is higher for women. In western Germany, the relative effect increases with skill level. In eastern Germany, there is no clear skill-specific pattern.
Beschäftigungsentwicklung innerhalb deutscher multinationaler Unternehmen während der globalen Rezession 2008/2009 / Employment Changes Within German Multinational Companies During the Global Recession 2008/2009
Authors: Peters Heiko , Weigert Benjamin 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Explanations for the robust situation of the German labour market in the course of the global recession 2008/09 are the usage of short-time work schemes, the higher internal labour flexibility due to provisions of collective agreements and the reduction of positive balances on working-time accounts. However, another aspect has not been paid much attention to so far. Multinational companies could have reduced employment as a reaction to the global recession not in their home country, but mostly in their foreign affiliates. The possibility ofmultinational companies to choose in which countries they change employment as a reaction on a changed economic situation would have enhanced German economic policy measures. Using the microdatabase direct investment provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank, we analyze the employment changes within German multinational companies during the global recession 2008/9.We find evidence that employment adjustments took place mainly in the foreign affiliates stabilizing employment in Germany.
A Comparative Study of the Lasso-type and Heuristic Model Selection Methods
Authors: Savin Ivan 
Published: April 2016

SummaryThis study presents a first comparative analysis of Lasso-type (Lasso, adaptive Lasso, elastic net) and heuristic subset selection methods. Although the Lasso has shown success in many situations, it has some limitations. In particular, inconsistent results are obtained for pairwise highly correlated predictors. An alternative to the Lasso is constituted by model selection based on information criteria (IC), which remain consistent in the situation mentioned. However, these criteria are hard to optimize due to a discrete search space. To overcome this problem, an optimization heuristic (Genetic Algorithm) is applied. To this end, results of a Monte-Carlo simulation study together with an application to an actual empirical problem are reported to illustrate the performance of the methods.
The Politics of Surprise Devaluations: Modelling Motives for Giving Up a Peg
Authors: Bohn Frank 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Planned ‘‘surprise’’ devaluations are often spurred by non-economic circumstances: a rentseeking government; political instability; or the opportunity to put the blame on a predecessor government. In this paper, these aspects are incorporated in the monetary and fiscal policy framework first suggested by Alesina and Tabellini (1987). It is shown that reneging on a fixed exchange rate promise unambiguously produces short term benefits, but long run losses. This leads to a non-straightforward trade-off between greediness (propensity for expropriation) and political stability (which implies a low time preference). The findings are empirically relevant and theoretically robust to extensions.
Technologiestandort Deutschland und internationale Wissensspillover / Technology Site Germany and International Knowledge Spillovers
Authors: Gilroy B. Michael , Lukas Elmar , Heimann Christian 
Published: April 2016

Summary
The inherent technical capability of a domestic economy has a significant effect upon trade. In addition, the innovation achievement potential of foreign countries and their companies may also enhance a given situation. International trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) provide knowledge transmission channels for innovation and research and development spillovers. Applying a Panel Analysis for the period 1990 to 2008, this study examines the bilateral export flows of Germany with the remaining 31 OECD countries. Using an extended gravity model the study investigates which influence the trade partners’ innovation potential, as well as the research intensity of foreign multinational companies (MNCs) has upon German exports. The novel aspect of this study is the introduction of a direct measure for knowledge spillover. The findings show, that the trade partners’ innovation potential as well as their FDI has a significant positive influence upon trade. In particular, the more innovative a foreign MNC located in Germany is, the greater the amount of German exports.
Identifying Free-riding in Home Renovation Programs Using Revealed Preference Data
Authors: Grösche Peter , Schmidt Christoph M. , Vance Colin 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Identifying free-ridership is significant to several issues relevant to program evaluation, including the calculation of net program benefits and assessments of political acceptability. Despite the potential of free-ridership to seriously undermine the economic efficiency of a program intervention, for instance to foster energy efficiency, the issue remains largely absent from contemporary environmental and energy policy discussions in Europe. One reason for this neglect is the inherent difficulty of assessing which households would have undertaken the energy conservation activity even without the program. This paper proposes a procedure to calculate the free-rider share using revealed preference data on home renovations from Germany’s residential sector.We employ a discrete-choice model to analyze the effect of grants on renovation choices, the output from which is used to assess the extent of free-ridership under a subsidy program very akin to an implemented grants program in Germany. Our empirical results suggest only very moderate energy savings induced by the program, making free-riding a problem of outstanding importance.
Firm-Provided Training During the Great Recession
Authors: Bellmann Lutz , Gerner Hans-Dieter , Leber Ute 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Even though the 2008/09 economic crisis had only minor employment effects on the German labor market, it might have affected firms’ further training and apprenticeship training behavior. From a theoretical point of view, the impact of the business cycle on firms’ training behaviour is ambiguous. There are reasons for an increase of training during a downturn (e.g., declining opportunity costs of training, fewer exit options for trained workers) as well as arguments for a decrease of training (e.g., uncertain future benefits of training). The existing empirical evidence on the relationship between training and economic downturns is relatively scarce. In particular, we are not aware of any empirical study investigating the effects of the most recent crisis on firms’ training activities in Germany. Our paper aims to fill this gap by using data from the IAB Establishment Panel, a representative German panel data set with annual information about almost 16,000 establishments. In particular, we analyzed the provision and the intensity of further training and apprenticeship training in firms which were affected by the crisis and in those which were not. Our empirical investigation revealed that the establishments, irrespective of whether or not they were hit by the economic crisis, decreased their further training and apprenticeship training efforts in 2009 compared to 2008. However, establishments directly affected by the great recession tended to reduce their training activities more often than those which were not affected. Furthermore, we found much stronger variations in the development of firms’ further training activities than in the development of their apprenticeship training.
Multiple Comparisons and Joint Significance in Panel Unit Root Testing with Evidence on International Interest Rate Linkage
Authors: Hassler Uwe , Werkmann Verena 
Published: April 2016

SummaryThis paper adds to the issue of inference regarding potentially nonstationary panels where units are correlated. Recently, it has been proposed to tackle this problem by computing individual p-values and combining them to an overall joint significance. We adopt and illustrate this fairly general approach allowing for competing means to account for cross-correlation when analyzing samples of N = 10 international interest rate differentials of different maturities.Alternatively, we investigate the approach of multiple testing or multiple comparison that has rarely been employed in econometrics. The advantages are that the computation of p-values is not necessarily required, and that one may identify for which specific unit a null hypothesis of interest may be considered as violated while controlling the overall significance level of the multiple testing problem. This comes at the price of an increased computational burden.
Diamonds are Forever: Job-Matching and Career Success of Young Workers
Authors: Göke Stefan , Prinz Joachim , Weimar Daniel 
Published: April 2016

SummaryThis study addresses the probability of young workers seeking for promotion after vocational training. By applying semi-parametric duration analysis with competing risks to a dataset of 17 youth rosters, each of them winner of either DFB-U19-Bundesliga or DFB-Youth-Cup between 1998/1999 and 2010/2011, the following paper tests some predictions that have emerged from Jovanovic’s (1979) matching theory. By running a youth academy a club assembles private information in order to decrease information deficits about a youth player’s performance. Findings from a database that covers 270 German youth players indicate that productivity, tenure and job seniority are key determinants for a successful debut with the home club. These results were not detected for potential debuts with an outside team after finishing youth engagement.
Does Switching to a Western German Employer Still Pay Off?
Authors: Alm Bastian , Engel Dirk , Weyh Antje 
Published: April 2016

Summary
This paper deals with the medium-term effects of job mobility on the average wage growth of job-movers in eastern Germany. The analysis is based on all employees subject to social insurance contributions working in eastern Germany in 2004. Using a statistical matching procedure combined with a difference-in-differences estimator, we observe that job-movers achieve an average annual wage increase of 2.68% between 2004 and 2009, which is significantly higher than the annual wage growth of selected non-movers (1.34 %). The finding is very robust against changes in the matching procedure. The positive wage differential due to changing jobs was found for a variety of subgroups of individuals that were formed on the basis of sociodemographic and firm-specific characteristics. In contrast to the evidence in the 1990’s, the positive wage effect is now significantly lower for movers from eastern to western Germany compared to movers within eastern Germany.
Redirecting International Trade: Contracts, Conflicts, and Institutions
Authors: Kokko Ari , Söderlund Bengt , Tingvall Patrik Gustavsson 
Published: April 2016

SummaryThe global financial crisis has contributed to the redirection of trade towards new markets outside the OECD area, where both demand patterns and the institutional environment differ from those in the OECD. This study provides an empirical examination of the consequences of this shift, based on Swedish firm-level trade data. Results suggest that weak institutions hamper trade and reduce the length of trade relations, especially for small firms. Trade in industries that are characterized by a high frequency of trade conflicts and where transactions require extensive relationship-specific investments are particularly difficult to redirect towards markets with weak institutions.
Risk or Resilience? The Role of Trade Integration and Foreign Ownership for the Survival of German Enterprises During the Crisis 2008–2010
Authors: Wagner Joachim , Gelübcke John P. Weche 
Published: April 2016

Summary
This is the first study of the link between internationalization and firm survival during the 2008/2009 crisis in Germany, a country which was hit relatively lightly compared to other countries. Moreover, it is the first study which looks at the role of importing, exporting and FDI simultaneously in the context of a global economic recession. We use a tailor-made representative dataset that covers all enterprises from the manufacturing sector with at least 20 employees. Our most striking result is to demonstrate the disadvantage of exporting for the chances of survival of a firm during the crisis in western Germany. Importing instead reveals a positive correlation with survival and firms that both export and import do not show a different exit risk relative to non-traders. A plausible explanation is that in a global recession, deteriorating markets abroad cause demand losses for exporters and improved conditions on factor markets which result in an advantage for firms sourcing from factor markets abroad. Two-way traders do not show a link with exit risk, supporting the idea that they were able to outweigh their losses from exporting with their gains from importing, in what could be called an export-import hedge. Furthermore, we cannot support the hypothesis that foreign multinationals are more volatile during times of economic crisis.
Inward Investment and the Drivers of Post Recession Recovery in Germany
Authors: Driffield Nigel , Temouri Yama 
Published: April 2016

Summary
This paper examines changes in the drivers of productivity in Germany over the period 1997-2012. We start by comparing the performance of German firms and inward investors before and during the recovery from the recent global financial crisis of 2008 across a range of sectors, and subsequently examine the channels through which different firms are able to generate productivity. Our results show that foreign investors are more productive than German MNEs and purely domestic firms, with the gap narrowing in the manufacturing sector, but growing in the service sector during the recovery period. We also contrast those firms for whom productivity growth is related to greater use of intangible assets, compared with those for whom productivity is linked to cash flow. Productivity of inward investors is driven by cash flow rather than intangible assets, these being limited to high-technology investors from the EU and the USA.