bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Institutional Determinants of School Efficiency and Equity: German States as a Microcosm for OECD Countries
Authors: Woessmann Ludger 
Published: April 2016

Summary
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.
Do Regional Price Levels Converge?
Authors: Dreger Christian , Kosfeld Reinhold 
Published: April 2016

Summary
We investigate price level convergence on the base of regional data for 439 German districts. Prices refer to the overall consumer price index as well as to the index without housing prices. To increase the efficiency of the testing framework, the analysis is based on panel unit root tests. First and second generation tests are applied. They indicate a lack of regional price convergence, as the null hypothesis of a unit root is usually not rejected. The second generation tests reveal that the source of the unit root is likely common for all regions. The results are very similar for the overall regional price level and the measure without housing prices, and for the Western and Eastern part of the German economy. The elimination of housing prices is not sufficient to obtain a price index where tradables dominate. One rationale of our findings is the persistent west-east divide in consumer prices. A second argument is related to the persistence of the price gradient between urban and rural regions.
The Macroeconomic Effects of Exogenous Fiscal Policy Shocks in Germany: A Disaggregated SVAR Analysis
Authors: Tenhofen Jörn , Wolff Guntram B. , Heppke-Falk Kirsten H. 
Published: April 2016

Summary
We investigate the effects of fiscal policy shocks on the German economy extending the SVAR approach of Blanchard and Perotti (2002). Direct government expenditure shocks are found to increase output and private consumption on impact. The output multiplier is smaller than one and is falling rather quickly reaching zero after 3 years. Government operating expenditure has size able positive effects on output, in the long run in particular due to public capital formation. Compensation of public employees is not effective in stimulating the economy.Government net revenue shocks do not affect output significantly. Indirect taxes have little effects, while direct taxes lower output significantly. Overall, the effects of fiscal policy are short-lived with the exception of public investment increases.
Herdenverhalten von Wechselkursprognostikern? / Herd Behavior of Exchange Rate Forecasters?
Authors: Pierdzioch Christian , Stadtmann Georg 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Exchange rates have been found to be more volatile than underlying macroeconomic fundamentals. Researchers have argued that the empirically observed high exchange-rate volatility may result from herd behavior of foreign-exchange traders and forecasters. We sketch a standard model that illustrates that herd behavior of foreign-exchange-rate forecasters may be rational. We then use survey data to test for herd behavior of forecasters. Our results suggest that exchange-rate-forecasters anti-herd and “lean against the wind” when forecasting exchange rates.
Housing Prices in Tokyo: A Comparison of Hedonic and Repeat Sales Measures
Authors: Shimizu Chihiro , Nishimura Kiyohiko G. , Watanabe Tsutomu 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Do indexes of house prices behave differently depending on the estimation method? If so, to what extent? To address these questions, we use a unique dataset that we compiled from individual listings in a widely circulated real estate advertisement magazine. The dataset contains more than 470,000 listings of housing prices between 1986 and 2008, including the period of the housing bubble and its burst.We find that there exists a substantial discrepancy in terms of turning points between hedonic and repeat sales indexes, even though the hedonic index is adjusted for structural changes and the repeat sales index is adjusted in the way Case and Shiller suggested. Specifically, the repeat sales measure signals turning points later than the hedonic measure: for example, the hedonic measure of condominium prices bottomed out at the beginning of 2002, while the corresponding repeat sales measure exhibits a reversal only in the spring of 2004. This discrepancy cannot be fully removed even if we adjust the repeat sales index for depreciation.
Regional Consumer Price Differences Within Germany
Authors: Linz Stefan 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Every month the Consumer Price Index for Germany (CPI) provides comprehensive and detailed information regarding the price development over time. However, when differences in the price level across regions in Germany have to be analysed at a given point in time, sufficient information is not available at present.
Interest in regional consumer price data is shown by both scientists and policy makers. Currently, this information demand is not met as regional consumer prices or regional price comparisons are not provided by the Federal Statistical Office in Germany.
Data available from the German Consumer Price Index is suitable to follow the price development over time but cannot be used directly to compare price levels of different regions because the goods tracked may be different from region to region.
The article first considers the information demand and gives an overview of existing price data. Its main part refers to an empirical study which was conducted to check if existing Consumer Price Index data can be used to calculate regional consumer price comparisons by ex-post selecting comparable products.
Forecasting with Factor Models Estimated on Large Datasets: A Review of the Recent Literature and Evidence for German GDP
Authors: Schumacher Christian 
Published: April 2016

Summary
This paper provides a review of the recent literature concerned with large factor models as forecast devices.We focus on factor models that account for mixed-frequency data and missing observations at the end of the sample. These are data irregularities applied forecasters have to cope with in real time. To extract the factors from the irregular data, special factor estimation techniques are necessary, expanding on the standard approaches for balanced data such as principal components (PC). The estimation methods include variants of the Expectation-Maximisation (EM) algorithm together with PC and factor estimation using state-space models. Given the estimated factors, forecasts can be obtained from bridge equations, mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) regressions and the Kalman smoother applied to fully-fledged factor models in state-space form. Empirical applications for German GDP growth often find that forecasts based on factor models are informative only a few months ahead compared to naive benchmarks. Thus, these models can be regarded as short-term forecast tools only. However, the factor models estimated on mixed-frequency data with missing observations tend to outperform factor models based on balanced data time-aggregated from high-frequency data.
Predictive Ability of Business Cycle Indicators under Test
Authors: Carstensen Kai , Wohlrabe Klaus , Ziegler Christina 
Published: April 2016

SummaryIn this paper we assess the information content of seven widely cited early indicators for the euro area with respect to forecasting area-wide industrial production. To this end, we use various tests that are designed to compare competing forecast models. In addition to the standard Diebold-Mariano test, we employ tests that account for specific problems typically encountered in forecast exercises. Specifically, we pay attention to nested model structures, we alleviate the problem of data snooping arising from multiple pairwise testing, and we analyze the structural stability in the relative forecast performance of one indicator compared to a benchmark model. Moreover, we consider loss functions that overweight forecast errors in booms and recessions to check-whether a specific indicator that appears to be a good choice on average is also preferable in times of economic stress. We find that none of this indicators uniformly dominates all its competitors. The optimal choice rather depends on the specific forecast situation and the loss function of the user. For 1-month forecasts the business climate indicator of the European Commission and the OECD composite leading indicator generally work well, for 6-month forecasts the OECD composite leading indicator performs very good by all criteria, and for 12-month forecasts the FAZ-Euro indicator published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is the only one that can beat the benchmark AR(1) model.
Forecasting Multivariate Volatility using the VARFIMA Model on Realized Covariance Cholesky Factors
Authors: Halbleib Roxana , Voev Valeri 
Published: April 2016

SummaryThis paper analyzes the forecast accuracy of the multivariate realized volatility model introduced by Chiriac and Voev (2010), subject to different degrees of model parametrization and economic evaluation criteria. Bymodelling the Cholesky factors of the covariance matrices, the model generates positive definite, but biased covariance forecasts. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence that parsimonious versions of the model generate the best covariance forecasts in the absence of bias correction. Moreover, we show by means of stochastic dominance tests that any risk averse investor, regardless of the type of utility function or return distribution, would be better-off from using this model than from using some standard approaches.
Ein-Euro-Jobs und reguläre Beschäftigung / One-Euro-Jobs and Regular Employment
Authors: Hohendanner Christian 
Published: April 2016

Summary
The most widespread active labour market program in Germany is the so-called ‘One-Euro- Job’. Participants carry out social activities like caring for the elderly, city cleaning or environmental activities. The principal objective is to improve or maintain the employability of hard-to-place unemployed. However, there is a certain risk of within-firm substitution of regular employees by One-Euro-Job participants. The aim of the study is to identify such substitution effects in participating establishments. For this purpose I present some descriptive results from the survey ‘Experience with One-Euro-Jobs’. In a further step I use data from the IAB Establishment Panel 2004 to 2007 to identify substitution effects. To account for selectivity, I apply a difference-in-difference approach and propensity score matching. The empirical results indicate that regular employment relationships are not substituted by One-Euro-Jobs. This holds for West as well as for East Germany. However, the identification of within-firm substitution in the matching procedure requires that the program has no employment effect on the control group. Otherwise, substitution effects cannot be identified. For this reason, I provide evidence for potential displacement effects in the control group using a fixed-effects panel model. The results indicate that the control group is not affected by the program.
Wie hat sich die intragenerationale Umverteilung in der staatlichen Säule des Rentensystems verändert? / Has Intragenerational Redistribution Become Less Important in Pension Systems’ Public Pillar?
Authors: Krieger Tim , Traub Stefan 
Published: April 2016

Summary
We empirically investigate whether the significance of intragenerational redistribution in the public pillar of pension systems in 20 OECD countries has changed systematically since the 1980s and whether international convergence of the degree of intragenerational redistribution can be observed. Intragenerational redistribution is measured by the Bismarckian factor which provides information about the relative importance of the earnings-benefit link in the pension formula (as compared to a flat-benefit Beveridgean pension system). Based on micro data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we find both, a trend towards (more Bismarckian) pension systems which obey the principle of participation equivalence and an international convergence of pension systems. The reduced variation of pension systems (sigma convergence) is driven by countries with a high degree of intragenerational redistribution catching up with more traditional Bismarckian countries (beta convergence). Both, fundamental pension reforms as Sweden’s and Italy’s move to „notional defined contribution‘‘ systems, and parametric reforms ranging from the removal of group-specific benefits to alternative calculations of contribution history, such as changing from „best years‘‘ to the entire worklife, underlie this development.
Which Parameters Determine the Development of Farm Numbers in Germany?
Authors: Röder Norbert , Kilian Stefan 
Published: April 2016

Summary
In Germany, agricultural land use is very heterogeneous with respect to management orientation and productivity even at the local level. In addition, there is a wide variation in the reasons for farm exits. A review of the literature shows that a limited number of explanatory variables are generally accepted as being driving forces for farm exit rates. For the majority of indicators, ambiguous results are reported. In this paper, we analyse the determining factors of farm exit rates in Germany by examining municipalities from 1999 to 2007.We evaluate the robustness of the relationship between a set of explanatory variables and farm exit rates at different spatial scales.Our results indicate that the direction of impact of some variables (farm size, population density and the share of ruminants kept at low intensity as a fraction of the total ruminant stock) on farm exit rates is unambiguous throughout Germany. For the majority of the analysed explanatory variables, the strength of their impact on farm exit rates depends on their observation level or regional context.
Energy Use Patterns in German Industry: Evidence from Plant-level Data
Authors: Petrick Sebastian , Rehdanz Katrin , Wagner Ulrich J. 
Published: April 2016

Summary
This paper analyzes energy use and CO2 emissions of more than 78 000 German industrial plants between 1995 and 2006. It is the first study to exploit exceptionally rich energy data that were recently matched to official micro datasets. We document that both energy use and intensity are highly dispersed across plants. When isolating the between-sector variation in energy intensity, there is a strong positive correlation with energy use, CO2 emissions and emission intensity. Yet there is no evidence that the scale of an industry determines its energy intensity. The dispersion of energy use across plants of a given sector, normalized by the median, is positively correlated with that of gross output, but not with the median energy use. Similarly, there is no evidence that the median energy intensity is correlated with the within- sector dispersion of energy intensity or with that of CO2 emissions. Looking at the fuel mix across sectors, we find that more energy intensive industries rely more on fuels other than electricity, although the variability among plants in those industries is extremely high. We also demonstrate that average fuel shares are sensitive to the skewness of the underlying distribution and recommend the use of median fuel shares for better representativeness.
One-eyed Epidemiologic Dummies at Nuclear Power Plants
Authors: Greiser Eberhard 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Krämer and Arminger in a preceding article in this volume insinuated that in a meta-analysis on childhood leukaemia in the vicinity of nuclear power plants (NPP) in five countries gross methodological errors had led to falsified statistics. Major assumptions were a) arbitrary exclusion of publications with nil results, and b) publication bias in conduct of the meta-analysis. It is demonstrated that all appropriate publications providing data on incident cases of leukaemia and on the underlying population or rates of incidence with confidence intervals had been included. In addition it is demonstrated that all publications excluded from the meta-analysis either did not provide sufficient data on NPPs or cases of these publications had been already included into the meta-analysis from other publications.
Are Most Published Research Findings False?
Authors: Diekmann Andreas 
Published: April 2016

Summary
In a provocative article Ioannidis (2005) argues that, in disciplines employing statistical tests of significance, professional journals report more wrong than true significant results. This short note sketches the argument and explores under what conditions the assertion holds. The “positive predictive value” (PPV) is lower than 1/2 if the a priori probability of the truth of a hypothesis is low. However, computation of the PPV includes only significant results. If both significant and non-significant results are taken into account the “total error ratio” (TER) will not exceed 1/2 provided no extremely large publication bias is present. Moreover, it is shown that theory-driven research may reduce the proportion of errors. Also, the role of replications is emphasized; replication studies of original research are so important because they drastically decrease the error ratio.
When Does the Second-Digit Benford’s Law-Test Signal an Election Fraud?
Authors: Shikano Susumu , Mack Verena 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Detecting election fraud with a simple statistical method and minimal information makes the application of Benford’s Law quite promising for a wide range of researchers. Whilst its specific form, the Second-Digit Benford’s Law (2BL)-test, is increasingly applied to fraud suspected elections, concerns about the validity of its test results have been raised. One important caveat of this kind of research is that the 2BL-test has been applied mostly to fraud suspected elections. Therefore, this article will apply the test to the 2009 German Federal Parliamentary Election against which no serious allegation of fraud has been raised. Surprisingly, the test results indicate that there should be electoral fraud in a number of constituencies. These counter intuitive results might be due to the naive application of the 2BL-test which is based on the conventional χ2 distribution. If we use an alternative distribution based on simulated election data, the 2BL-test indicates no significant deviation. Using the simulated election data, we also identified under which circumstances the naive application of the 2BL-test is inappropriate. Accordingly, constituencies with homogeneous precincts and a specific range of vote counts tend to have a higher value for the 2BL statistic.
Difficulties Detecting Fraud? The Use of Benford’s Law on Regression Tables
Authors: Bauer Johannes , Groß Jochen 
Published: April 2016

Summary
The occurrence of scientific fraud damages the credibility of science. An instrument to discover deceit was proposed with Benford’s law, a distribution which describes the probability of significant digits in many empirical observations. If Benford-distributed digits are expected and empirical observations deviate from this law, the difference yields evidence for fraud.
This article analyses the practicability and capability of the digit distribution to investigate scientific counterfeit. In our context, capability means that little data is required to discover forgery. Furthermore, we present a Benford-based method which is more effective in detecting deceit and can also be extended to several other fields of digit analysis. We also restrict this article to the research area of non-standardized regressions. The results reproduce and extend the finding that non-standardized regression coefficients follow Benford’s law. Moreover, the data show that investigating regressions from different subjects demands more observations and hence is less effective than investigating regressions from single persons. Consequently, the digit distribution can discover indications for fraud, but only if the percentage of forgery in the data is large. With a decreasing proportion of fabricated values, the number of required cases to detect a significant difference between real and fraudulent regressions rises. Under the condition that only few scientists forge results, the investigation method becomes ineffective and inapplicable.
Short- and Long-term Ex-Post Effects of Unemployment Insurance Sanctions
Authors: Hofmann Barbara 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Unemployment insurance (UI) benefit sanctions in form of benefit reductions are intended to set an incentive to comply with job search requirements and to decrease moral hazard behaviour. However, sanctions might also affect the subsequent employment history. Empirical research on long-term effects is scarce. Using administrative data, we investigate short- and long-term effects of sanctions on the reemployment probability of individuals in West Germany who entered UI benefit receipt between April 2000 and March 2001. As outcomes we consider regular employment, other employment, and having dropped out of the registered labour market. By applying a matching approach that takes the timing of treatment into account, we identify the ex post effect of UI sanctions. According to our results, sanctions are effective in increasing the probability of regular employment for young sanctioned UI benefit recipients. Older women on average respond to a sanction by taking up jobs of lower quality. For both women and men, we find an increased number of months out of the official work force after a sanction.
Diskussionsbeitrag / Discussion. Paper Coin: Migration and Seigniorage within the Euro Area
Authors: Seitz Franz , Stoyan Dietrich , Tödter Karl-Heinz 
Published: April 2016

Summary
The introduction of the euro coins in 2002 presented a unique opportunity to study the crossborder migration and the mixing process of coins in different euro-area countries. This note analyses how many euro coins flow from and into Germany and which composition of coins is to be expected in the long run. A simple model of coin migration is formulated and calibrated for Q1 coins. The ratio of German coins circulating in Germany is likely to settle around 50%if past growth of coin volumes continues. In contrast to banknotes, allocation of coin seigniorage depends on national coin issuance. Different national growth rates of coin volumes have important implications for coin seigniorage.
Literaturbeitrag / Review Paper. Leistungserstellung, Kreislaufgleichgewicht und das Geld
Authors: Helmstädter Ernst 
Published: April 2016

Summary
Based on the original version of Stützel’s habilitation thesis, a so far neglected issue of circular flow equilibrium is considered: the microeconomic transactions during the production period of the neoclassical model of general equilibrium. The specific equilibrium conditions for the „transactions profiles‘‘ are analyzed given the institutional rules of Fisher’s Quantity Equation. The implications for the equilibrium with respect to Stützel’s notions of „lock-step with constant steps‘‘ and „buying lead with constant steps‘‘ are also derived.