bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Hausman Test Statistic can be Negative even Asymptotically
Authors: Schreiber Sven 
Published: April 2016

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

Summary
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

SummaryThe 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

Summary
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.