Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre by Document type "WorkingPaper"
Now showing 1 - 20 of 177
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Publication A data-driven procedure to determine the bunching window : an application to the Netherlands(2016) Bosch, Nicole; Dekker, Vincent; Strohmaier, KristinaThis paper presents new empirical evidence on taxpayers responsiveness to taxation by estimating the compensated elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net-of-tax rate in the Netherlands. Applying the bunching approach introduced by Saez (2010), we find small, but clear evidence of bunching behaviour at the thresholds of the Dutch tax schedule with a precise estimated elasticity of 0.023 at the upper threshold. In line with the literature, we find much larger estimates for women and self-employed individuals, but we can also identify significant bunching behaviour for wage employed individuals which we can attribute to tax deductions for couples. We add to the bunching literature by proposing to rely on the information criteria to determine the counterfactual model, as well as developing an intuitive, data-driven procedure to determine the bunching window.Publication A data–cleaning augmented Kalman filter for robust estimation of state space models(2015) Marczak, Martyna; Proietti, Tommaso; Grassi, StefanoThis article presents a robust augmented Kalman filter that extends the data– cleaning filter (Masreliez and Martin, 1977) to the general state space model featuring nonstationary and regression effects. The robust filter shrinks the observations towards their one–step–ahead prediction based on the past, by bounding the effect of the information carried by a new observation according to an influence function. When maximum likelihood estimation is carried out on the replacement data, an M–type estimator is obtained. We investigate the performance of the robust AKF in two applications using as a modeling framework the basic structural time series model, a popular unobserved components model in the analysis of seasonal time series. First, a Monte Carlo experiment is conducted in order to evaluate the com- parative accuracy of the proposed method for estimating the variance parameters. Second, the method is applied in a forecasting context to a large set of European trade statistics series.Publication A direct test of socially desirable responding in contingent valuation interviews(2011) Börger, TobiasPublication A neo-Schumpeterian perspective on the analytical macroeconomic framework : the expanded reproduction system(2015) Jun, Bogang; Kim, Tai-YooThis study aims to introduce a new analytical macroeconomic framework, the expanded reproduction system, that combines the accumulated wisdom of several contemporary economic models while also compensating for their shortcomings. This new framework may be used to study macroeconomic phenomena from both the supply and demand side over a number of different time intervals. Furthermore, as we account for both new product and productivity innovations, we are able to account for both qualitative and quantitative developments within the economy.Publication A review of spatial econometric models for count data(2017) Glaser, StephanieDespite the increasing availability of spatial count data in research areas like technology spillovers, patenting activities, insurance payments, and crime forecasting, specialized models for analysing such data have received little attention in econometric literature so far. The few existing approaches can be broadly classified into observation-driven models, where the random spatial effects enter the moments of the dependent variable directly, and parameterdriven models, where the random spatial effects are unobservable and induced via a latent process. Moreover, within these groups the modelling approaches (and therefore the interpretation) of spatial effects are quite heterogeneous, stemming in part from the nonlinear structure of count data models. The purpose of this survey is to compare and contrast the various approaches for econometric modelling of spatial counts discussed in the literature.Publication An equilibrium model of 'global imbalances' revisited(2011) Körner, Finn Marten?Global imbalances? are almost universally regarded as a disequilibrium phenomenon. Caballero, Farhi, and Gourinchas (2008) challenge this notion with their dynamic general equilibrium model of global imbalances. The authors conclude that current account deficit nations need not worry about long-lasting deficits as long as the model is in equilibrium. The joint model in this paper combines the two model extensions for exchange rates and FDI which are disjunct in the original model. An analytical solution to the new joint model is neither as straightforward as for the separate models nor can previous results from calibrated simulation be confirmed without restriction. The model is highly dependent on parameter assumptions: A variation of calibrated parameters highlights the prime impact of investment costs previously assumed away. Sustainable equilibrium paths for global imbalances are much narrower in updated simulations than previously predicted. Policy recommendations on the sustainability of international debt holdings therefore need to be a lot more cautious.Publication Are sociocultural factors important for studying a science university major?(2015) Grossmann, Volker; Osikominu, Aderonke; Osterfeld, MariusThis paper examines the role of the sociocultural background of students for choosing STEM fields in university. We combine rich survey data on university graduates in Switzerland with municipality level information from the census as well as nationwide elections and referenda to characterize a students home environment with respect to religious and political attitudes towards gender equality and science-related issues. Our empirical estimates are based on a structural Roy model which accounts for differences in costs (relative distance to the next technical university) and earnings across majors as well as for selection bias. Our findings suggest that male students from conservative municipalities are more likely to study a STEM field, whereas the sociocultural background plays little role for the major choice of females.Publication Assessing uncertainty in Europe and the US : is there a common factor?(2012) Sauter, OliverThis paper aims an empirical investigation of uncertainty in the Euro Zone as well as the US. For this purpose I conduct a factor analysis of uncertainty measures starting in 2001 until the end of 2011. I use survey-based data provided by the ECB and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia as well as the stock market indices VSTOXX and VIX, both measures of implied volatility of stock market movements. Each measure shows an increase in uncertainty during the last years marked by the financial turmoil. Given the rise in uncertainty, the question arises whether this uncertainty is driven by the same underlying factors. For the Euro Zone, I show that uncertainty can be separated into factors of short and long-term uncertainty. In the US there is a sharp distinction between uncertainty that drives stock market and ?real? variables on the one hand and inflation (short and long-term) on the other hand. Combining both data sets, factor analysis delivers (1) an international stock market factor, (2) a common European uncertainty factor and (3) an US-inflation uncertainty factor.Publication Automation and demographic change(2017) Abeliansky, Ana; Prettner, KlausWe analyze the effects of declining population growth on the adoption of automation technology. A standard theoretical framework of the accumulation of traditional physical capital and of automation capital predicts that countries with a lower population growth rate are the ones that innovate and/or adopt new automation technologies faster. We test the theoretical prediction by means of panel data for 60 countries over the time span from 1993 to 2013. Regression estimates provide empirical support for the theoretical prediction and suggest that a 1% increase in population growth is associated with approximately a 2% reduction in the growth rate of robot density. Our results are robust to the inclusion of standard control variables, the use of different estimation methods, the consideration of a dynamic framework with the lagged dependent variable as regressor, and changing the measurement of the stock of robots.Publication Automation, robots and wage inequality in Germany : a decomposition analysis(2020) Schmid, Ramona; Brall, FranziskaWe analyze how and through which channels wage inequality is affected by the rise in automation and robotization in the manufacturing sector in Germany from 1996 to 2017. Combining rich linked employer-employee data accounting for a variety of different individual, firm and industry characteristics with data on industrial robots and automation probabilities of occupations, we are able to disentangle different potential causes behind changes in wage inequality in Germany. We apply the recentered influence function (RIF) regression based Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition on several inequality indices and find evidence that besides personal characteristics like age and education the rise in automation and robotization contributes significantly to wage inequality in Germany. Structural shifts in the workforce composition towards occupations with lower or medium automation threat lead to higher wage inequality, which is observable over the whole considered time period. The effect of automation on the wage structure results in higher inequality in the 1990s and 2000s, while it has a significant decreasing inequality effect for the upper part of the wage distribution in the more recent time period.Publication Automatisierung, Wachstum und Ungleichheit(2018) Schwarzer, Johannes; Prettner, Klaus; Geiger, NielsDie Automatisierung stellt eines der wichtigsten Phänomene dar, welche aktuell innerhalb der Wirtschaftswissenschaften und der breiteren Öffentlichkeit diskutiert werden. Dabei finden sich in Bezug auf die Frage, wie sich die Automatisierung gesamtwirtschaftlich auswirkt, sehr unterschiedliche Positionen: Am einen Ende wird auf die negativen Beschäftigungseffekte verwiesen, wenn Menschen mehr und mehr durch Maschinen ersetzt werden und ihre am Markt angebotene Arbeitsleistung nicht mehr nachgefragt somit obsolet wird. Gleichzeitig wird die Automatisierung auch für einen Anstieg der wirtschaftlichen Ungleichheit verantwortlich gemacht. Optimistischere Stimmen verweisen andererseits auf die Entwicklung seit der Industriellen Revolution, die durch fortlaufende technologische Veränderungen mit hohem Produktivitätswachstum und damit starken Wohlfahrtssteigerungen einherging, ohne dass es langfristig zu Massenarbeitslosigkeit gekommen ist. Der vorliegende Aufsatz diskutiert einige allgemein relevante empirische Daten und skizziert ein einfaches theoretisches Wachstumsmodell zur Analyse der Automatisierung. Die hierbei festgehaltenen Ergebnisse werden unter Bezugnahme auf die aktuelle wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Literatur zu den bisherigen und für die Zukunft zu erwartenden ökonomischen Effekten der Automatisierung vertieft und erweitert. Aus den verschiedenen Ansatzpunkten und Überlegungen werden schließlich wirtschaftspolitische Handlungsmöglichkeiten abgeleitet, wobei auch jeweils diskutiert wird, welchen Einschränkungen diese Maßnahmen unterliegen.Publication Avoiding evolutionary inefficiencies in innovation networks(2011) Pyka, AndreasInnovation policy is in need for a rational which allows the design and evaluation of policy instruments. In economic policy traditionally the focus is on market failures and efficiency measures are used to decide whether policy should intervene and which instrument should be applied. In innovation policy this rational cannot meaningfully be applied because of the uncertain and open character of innovation processes. Uncertainty is not a market failure and cannot be repaired. Inevitably policy makers are subject to failure and their goals are to be considered as much more modest compared to the achievement of a social optimum. Instead of optimal innovation, the avoidance of evolutionary inefficiencies becomes the centrepiece of innovation policy making. Superimposed to the several sources of evolutionary inefficiencies are socalled network inefficiencies. Because of the widespread organisation of innovation in innovation networks, the network structures and dynamics give useful hints for innovation policy, where and when to intervene.Publication Bidirectional relationship between investor sentiment and excessreturns : new evidence from the wavelet perspective(2015) Marczak, Martyna; Beißinger, ThomasThis paper sheds new light on the mutual relationship between investor sentiment and excess returns corresponding to the bubble component of stock prices. We propose to use the wavelet concept of the phase angle to determine the lead–lag relation between these variables. The wavelet phase angle allows for decoupling short– and long–run relations and is additionally capable of identifying time–varying comovement patterns. By applying this concept to excess returns of the monthly S&P500 index and two alternative monthly US sentiment indicators we find that in the short run (until 3 months) sentiment is leading returns whereas for periods above 3 months the opposite can be observed.Publication Business cycles in the economy and in economics : an econometric analysis(2015) Geiger, Niels; Kufenko, VadimIt is sometimes pointed out that economic research is prone to move in cycles and react to particular events such as crises and recessions. The present paper analyses this issue through a quantitative analysis by answering two closely related research questions: (1) whether or not there are patterns in the economic literature on business cycles, and (2) whether or not these are correlated with movements in actual economic activity. To tackle these questions, a bibliometric analysis of key terms related to business cycle and crises theory is performed. In a second step, these results are confronted with data on actual economic developments in order to investigate the question of whether or not the theoretical literature follows trends and developments in economic data. Respective time series are detrended by the Kalman filter in order to estimate cycles. To determine the connection between economic activity and developments in the academic literature, a descriptive analysis is scrutinized by Granger causality tests. The paper also includes IRF analysis for quantitative assessment of the effects from economic to bibliometric variables. The results point towards a confirmation of the hypothesis of an effect of business cycles and crises in economic variables on discussions in the literature.Publication Capital income shares and income inequality in the European Union(2013) Schmid, Kai Daniel; Schlenker, EvaIn this paper, we measure the effect of changing capital income shares upon inequality of gross household income. Using EU-SILC data covering 17 EU countries from 2005 to 2011 we find that capital income shares are positively associated with the concentration of gross household income. Moreover, we show that the transmission of a shift in capital income shares into the personal distribution of income depends on the concentration of capital income in an economy. Using fixed effect models we find that changing capital income shares play an important role in the development of household income inequality. Hence, in many industrialized countries income inequality has by no means evolved independently from the observed structural shift in factor income towards a higher capital income share over the last decades.Publication Children’s health, human capital accumulation, and R&D-based economic growth(2017) Baldanzi, Annarita; Bucci, Alberto; Prettner, KlausWe analyze the effects of childrens health on human capital accumulation and on long-run economic growth. For this purpose we design an R&D-based growth model in which the stock of human capital of the next generation is determined by parental education and health investments. We show that i) there is a complementarity between education and health: if parents want to have better educated children, they also raise health investments and vice versa; ii) parental health investments exert an unambiguously positive effect on long-run economic growth, iii) faster population growth reduces long-run economic growth. These results are consistent with the empirical evidence for modern economies in the twentieth century.Publication Competitiveness at the country-sector level : new measures based on global value chains(2018) Beißinger, Thomas; Marczak, MartynaWe propose the so-called domestic “embodied unit labor costs” (EULC) at the country-sector level as a new cost-related basis for measures of international competitiveness. EULC take into account that a sector’s labor costs constitute only a small share of its total cost which to a large extent consist of expenses for inter- mediate goods from other sectors. In line with a simple Leontief-type model, the proposed measure is constructed as a weighted average of unit labor costs of all do- mestic sectors contributing to the final goods of a specific sector. The contribution is expressed in value-added terms and takes global supply chains into account. We also show how EULC can be consistently calculated for sectoral aggregates such as the tradable goods sector. Based on EULC we propose the “embodied real effec- tive exchange rate” (EREER) at the country-sector level as a new competitiveness indicator where the relevance of trading partners is quantified by an appropriate value-added measure. The chosen value-added concept replaces gross exports tra- ditionally used as the weight basis in effective exchange rates. Using the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) we employ the proposed indicators to shed new light on changes in cost competitiveness at the sectoral level for Germany, and compare the empirical evidence with selected other euro area countries.Publication Continuity under a different name, the outcome of privatisation in Serbia(2016) Geloso, Vincent; Ivanovic, Vladan; Kufenko, Vadim; Begovic, Boris; Stanisic, NenadNormally, privatisation is seen as beneficial. In the case of Serbia, the results are disappointing. This paper considers the failure of privatisation in Serbia – a latecomer in the matter – where privatisation was partly a result of exogenous pressures. In Serbia, a sizeable number of privatised firms were bought by bureaucrats and politicians and all firms were subjected to a period of supervision. We argue that this process of privatisation was designed to allow rentseekers to conserve their privileges through asset stripping and that this explains the failure. In order to do so, we perform empirical analysis of the determinants of liquidation, merger and bankruptcy of privatised firms from 2002 to 2015. We construct a novel data set from primary sources, free of the ‘survivorship bias’ and containing proxies for various types of owners, indirect signs of asset stripping strategy and a broad range of controls. Our results indicate that firms owned by politicians face significantly higher risks of bankruptcy, especially after the end of supervision.Publication Cyclicality of real wages in the USA and Germany : new insights from wavelet Analysis(2012) Gómez, Víctor ; Marczak, MartynaThis article provides new insights into the cyclical behavior of consumer and producer real wages in the USA and Germany. We apply two methods for the estimation of the cyclical components from the data: the approach based on the structural time series models and the ARIMA?model?based approach combined with the canonical decomposition and a band?pass filter. We examine the extracted cycles drawing on two wavelet concepts: wavelet coherence and wavelet phase angle. In contrast to the analysis in the time or frequency domains, wavelet analysis allows for the identification of possible changes in cyclical patterns over time. From the findings of our study, we can infer that the USA and Germany differ with respect to the lead?lag relationship of real wages and the business cycle. In the USA, both real wages are leading the business cycle in the entire time interval. The German consumer real wage is, on the other hand, lagging the business cycle. For the German producer real wage, the lead?lag pattern changes over time. We also find that real wages in the USA as well in Germany are procyclical or acyclical until 1980 and countercyclical thereafter.Publication Decomposing a decomposition : within-country differences and the role of structural change in productivity growth(2019) Mühlen, Henning; Escobar, OctavioIn this article, we investigate the relevance of structural change in country wide productivity growth considering within-country differences. For this purpose, we propose a two-step decomposition approach that accounts for differences among subnational units. To highlight the relevance of our procedure compared to the prevalent approach in the existing development literature (which usually neglects subnational differences), we show an application with data for the Mexican economy. Specifically, we contrast findings obtained from country-sector data on the one hand with those obtained from (more disaggregated) state-sector data on the other hand. One main insight is that the qualitative and quantitative results differ substantially between the two approaches. Our procedure reveals that structural change appeared to be growth-reducing during the period from 2005 to 2016. We show that this negative effect is driven mainly by the reallocation of (low-skilled) labor within subnational units.