Browsing by Subject "Paneldaten"

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International student mobility, student exchange programs, and migration : evidence from gravity estimations
(2022) Reczkowski, Isabella; Felbermayr, Gabriel
The thesis is dedicated to the empirical investigation of international student mobility and is divided into eight chapters. The introductory chapter 1 describes the motivation for the thesis and provides a brief overview of the current literature and the gap that this dissertation fills. Chapter 2 discusses the rationales for cross-border education, describing the four approaches of the OECD (2004) for international student mobility: the mutual understanding approach, the skilled migration approach, the revenue-generating approach, and the capacity building approach. The chapter then discusses the challenges resulting from international student mobility. Besides the brain drain and brain gain phenomenon that occurs when international students decide to work abroad, international student mobility raises the question of how to provide equal access to higher education and ensure the same level of quality and accreditation across the board. Furthermore, the chapter includes a detailed discussion on the challenges that arise when higher education is mainly publicly financed in a world where students and graduates are mobile. This is mainly the case in Europe, whereas students in other countries are accustomed to paying for higher education. Chapter 3 goes on to describe the data on international student mobility used in this work. Since data for years prior to 1998 are only available from printed UNESCO Statistical Yearbooks, this dissertation has constructed a new database entering the data manually for the years 1970 to 1997 for 29 destination countries and almost all countries of origin. The chapter demonstrates that student mobility increased sharply. Starting with an average number of roughly 460 thousand students in the first period covering the years 1970 to 1974, the number grew by a factor of about 8 to roughly 3.7 million students in the last period covering the years 2010 to 2015. This number is strongly concentrated on a few destination and origin countries: while the concentration in the destination countries decreased over the decades which were analyzed, with the top five countries accounting for about 77 percent in the 1970s and 50 percent in the period 2000 to 2015, the concentration in the origin countries increased from about 23 to 33 percent. The decreasing concentration of destination countries demonstrates the strong competition among these countries trying to attract international students. In order to better understand this concentration, chapter 4 provides a descriptive analysis of destination and origin countries. Apart from the five main Anglo-Saxon destination countries–the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand–the European countries France and Germany have always been among the most important destination countries since 1970. Furthermore, Russia and Japan have played an important role and some Asian, European, and Arab countries have also recently emerged as important destination countries. The countries that send the most students abroad are Asia-Pacific Rim countries followed by European countries. With this in mind, three groups of countries have had a major impact on student mobility: Europe, Asia-Pacific countries, and Anglo-Saxon countries. In contrast to the other regions, student mobility in Europe is supported by policy-makers and instruments which are supported by large investments. Therefore, this work strives to investigate the effects of the two famous European programs which were introduced to promote student mobility: the student exchange program Erasmus that was launched in 1987, and the Bologna Process that began in 1999. Chapter 5 strives to test the hypothesis of whether the student exchange program Erasmus increases student mobility between the member countries. The chapter uses data on international student mobility for the years 1999 to 2015 obtained from the electronic UNESCO database for 155 host and 187 origin countries which are merged with a dummy variable on joint membership in the Erasmus program. Using these panel data in a theory-grounded gravity model by running fixed effects methods, the chapter finds that student mobility between Erasmus member countries is, on average, about 53 percent higher. To address the causality question, the chapter follows Wooldridge (2002) and performs an F-test for strict exogeneity and finds a positive causal effect on international student mobility. This effect is more stable for the time during and after the economic crisis. Furthermore, student exchange between Erasmus countries seems to occur more in favor of cultural experience and is not based on economic factors. Chapter 6 repeats these estimates controlling additionally for joint membership in the Bologna Process and finds that student mobility between Bologna Process members is, on average, about 50 percent higher. Importantly, both European programs–Erasmus and the Bologna Process–turn out to be significant determinants separately. Estimating the effect for the time before and after the establishment of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) shows that the impact is higher and more stable since the EHEA was established in 2010. These findings suggest that the Erasmus program and the Bologna Process have fulfilled their goals of increasing student mobility and, therefore, justify their budget. Since the skilled migration approach argues that countries attract international students hoping that they stay in the country of studies afterwards and increase the stock of highly-skilled workers, chapter 7 investigates the question: to what extent do countries that attract foreign students benefit from an increased stock of educated foreign workers? Using information from the UNESCO Statistical Yearbooks, the chapter constructs a new panel database of bilateral international student mobility for 150 origin countries, 23 host countries for the years 1970 to 2000. These data are matched with information on bilateral stocks of international migrants by educational attainment from Docquier et al. (2008), available for 1990 and 2000. Running theory-founded gravity models by conditional fixed effects Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood methods, this chapter finds that, on average, an increase of students by 10 percent increases the stock of tertiary educated workers in host countries by about 0.9 percent. That average effect is, however, entirely driven by Anglo-Saxon countries. On average, the results imply a student retention rate of about 70 percent. These findings suggest that the costs of educating foreign students are at least partially offset by increased availability of foreign talent. Finally, the last chapter 8 concludes.
Investor beliefs and their impact on financial markets
(2021) Hartmann, Carolin; Burghof, Hans-Peter
The idea of this thesis is to use new data sources to approximate investor beliefs. It investigates whether the approximation improves the measurement of return and volatility in existing model frameworks. The findings are that differences in implied volatility, Google Search volume and Twitter Volume can be proxy variables for investor beliefs. They have an impact on financial market indicators and on the prediction of future market movements. Comparison of the trading behaviour of individual and institutional investors to predict market movements The first approach is to create a new sentiment index which compares the difference between retail investor behaviour at the Stuttgart Stock Exchange (SSE) and professional investors at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE). The measure is a comparison between the implied volatility measures for the DAX at the FSE (VDAX and VDAX-NEW) and a newly created implied volatility index (VSSE) for the SSE. The sentiment index is significant in predicting the daily returns on a size-based long-short portfolio over a four-year period. The analysis shows the persistent inconsistence between prices of structured products for retail investors on the SSE and option prices of professional investors on the FSE. The results provide empirical evidence that there are significant persistent behavioural differences between the two investor types which is reflected in persistent mispricing. Measurability of investor beliefs and their impact on financial markets The second approach is to measure individual investor beliefs with Google search volume (GSV) and Twitter volume (TV) to analyse their impact on financial markets. The basis is a daily panel of 29 Dow Jones Industrial average index (DJIA) stocks over a time period of 3.5 years in a panel data set-up. The impact on trading activity measured by turnover, is positive for GSV and TV on the same day and the next day which indicates their predictive power. The impact on realized volatility (RV), indicating the share of noise traders on the market, is only positive and significant for TV. It is significant on the same day and the next day. The impact of GSV is not significant. The results support the idea that GSV and TV capture the beliefs of individual investors. Although they suggest that the impact of TV on financial markets is more important than the impact of GSV. Predictive power of Google and Twitter The third approach is to use GSV and TV as a proxy for investor attention and investor sentiment, to assess their predictive power on the RV of the DJIA. The basis is a time-series set-up with a vector autoregression (VAR) model over a period of 2.5 years. The findings show that GSV and TV granger cause RV, controlling for macroeconomic and financial factors. Again, the effect of TV on RV is more important than the effect of GSV. In-sample, the linear prediction model with GSV and TV outperforms a standard AR (1) process. Out-of-sample the AR (1) process outperforms the standard model with GSV and TV. Clustering for high and low volatility groups, the analysis shows that the effect of GSV and TV on RV changes. Especially in times of high and low RV, GSV and TV seem to contain new information, as they improve the model fit compared to a standard AR (1) process. However, the results are not persistent in- and out-of-sample. This underlines that the results of GSV and TV are not generally persistent but depend on the selected criteria. Overall, the results of this thesis show that investor beliefs have an impact on financial markets. The measures, such as a sentiment index based on implied volatility, GSV and TV are proxy variables for investor beliefs. Future research should further improve the comprehension of investor beliefs to improve causality and economic significance in the long term.
The impact of agricultural innovations on poverty, vulnerability and resilience to food insecurity of smallholders in Ethiopia
(2022) Biru, Wubneshe Dessalegn; Zeller, Manfred
Ethiopia has adopted agriculture centered growth strategies over the last three decades that give more emphasis on improving agricultural production and productivity with the ultimate goal to transform the country’s economy. The strategies have mainly aimed at improving smallholder agriculture through introducing improved technologies intended to boost agricultural production and thus alleviate poverty and food insecurity. Although agriculture centered growth strategies contributed to sustained growth in the country over the last two decades, the benefits of growth have not been evenly distributed with observed rising income inequality and a still significant proportion of smallholders remaining under the poverty line. Similarly, despite considerable yield progress over the last three decades due to the introduction of improved inputs Ethiopian farmers’ yield gap compared with other developing countries is quite high. Moreover, the frequent occurrences of shocks such as drought and flooding adversely affect smallholders substantially and thereby exacerbate the existing poverty and food insecurity problems in the country. This thesis applied different econometric techniques to analyze the impact of the adoption of multiple agricultural technologies on crop yield, poverty, vulnerability, and resilience to food insecurity in Ethiopia. The study uses four rounds of household level panel data collected between 2012 and 2019 to assess the link between the adoption of the different combinations of five productivity-enhancing technologies: chemical fertilizer, improved seed, pesticide, and soil and water conservation practices: terracing and contour ploughing on consumption, poverty, vulnerability, and yields of smallholders. To solve the endogeneity problem in the regression models, we applied two-stage multinomial endogenous switching regression model combined with the Mundlak approach. Additionally, the thesis examines the role of the adoption of chemical fertilizer and improved seeds on household resilience to food insecurity amid the occurrence of adverse shocks. The findings are presented in three chapters of the cumulative thesis (Chapters two to four). Chapter two analyses the effect of productivity enhancing technologies and soil and water conservation measures and their possible combinations on consumption, poverty, and vulnerability to poverty. Per capita consumption expenditure for food and other essential non-food items, such as clothing and footwear, is used as a proxy variable to measure poverty. Using the national poverty line in 2011 prices, sample households are grouped into poor and non-poor households and the movement of sample households in and out of poverty between 2012 and 2016 is analyzed using a poverty transition matrix. By employing the ordered logit model, the study additionally examined the dynamics of poverty and vulnerability as well as their drivers. The results show that the adoption of the different combinations of agricultural technology sets including single technology adoption has considerable impacts on consumption expenditure and the greatest impact is attained when farmers combine multiple complementary inputs. Similarly, we find that the likelihood of households remaining poor or vulnerable decreased with adoption. In addition, the study revealed that poorer households are the least adopters of the technology combinations considered in the study, thereby being the least to benefit from adoption. We, therefore, conclude that the adoption of multiple complementary technologies has substantial dynamic benefits that improve the poverty and vulnerability status of households, and given the observed low level of adoption rates, we suggest that much more intervention is warranted, with a special focus on poorer and vulnerable households, to ensure smallholders get support to improve their input use. Chapter three assesses the impacts of multiple technology adoption on the yield of Ethiopia’s four staple crops, namely teff, wheat, maize and barley. Regarding the empirical estimation, we specified yield equations for each of the four crops and five to six possible input combinations that are included in the analysis indicating the presence of slope effect of technology choice other than the intercept of the outcome equations. The findings suggest that the application of two or more complementary inputs is considerably linked with higher maize, teff, barley, and wheat yield. Specifically, barley yield is highest for farmers who have adopted a combination of at least three of the technologies. Maize producers are the largest beneficiaries of the technologies. The impact of the technology choice sets tends to have an inconclusive effect on wheat and teff yields. However, a significant yield gap in all of the four crops was observed. Socio-economic characteristics of the household head such as age and gender as well as the household’s access to infrastructure and spatial characteristics of the household are other important determinants of crop yield. The implications are that more publicly funded efforts could be worthwhile for easing adoption constraints, which would in turn help smallholders to increase their crop yields that indirectly improve their livelihood. Chapter four aims to identify the determinants of household resilience to food insecurity which is the household’s ability to absorb or cope with the negative effects of shocks and bounce back to at least their initial livelihood status and assess its role on future household food security when hit by adverse shocks. Furthermore, the study analyzes the role of single or joint adoption of chemical fertilizer and improved seed on household food security. The household food security indicators used in the analysis are dietary diversity and per capita food consumption and uses data from the last three waves out of our four survey rounds. In terms of empirical estimation, the household resilience capacity index is estimated by combining factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Then different regression models are executed to assess the causal link between technology adoption and resilience capacity and household food security indicators in the face of adverse shocks. Our findings reveal that the most important pillars contributing to the building of household resilience capacity are assets followed by access to basic services. We find that the initial level of the household resilience score is significantly and positively associated with future household food security status. Moreover, the results reveal that the adoption of chemical fertilizer and improved seed is significantly and positively associated with household resilience capacity index, dietary diversity, and food consumption over time. Shocks such as drought appear to be significant contributors to the loss of household food security. Overall, it is revealed that the adoption of improved inputs significantly and positively increases household food security. However, the results show no evidence that supports the current level of adoption that helps households to shield themselves from the adverse effects of shocks. Finally, this study gives insights on examining the impacts and impact pathways of adoption of improved technologies on smallholder welfare which guide decision-makers for intervention as well as pave a way for future research that contributes to the fight against rural poverty and food insecurity. This thesis also concludes that public intervention in terms of investment in providing improved agricultural practices is crucial in improving rural livelihood, but it has to be inclusive and provide opportunities for the poor and vulnerable.
Trade integration, global capital flows and the link to institutional quality from a North-South perspective
(2020) Schneider, Sophie Therese; Jung, Benjamin
This doctoral thesis is a cumulative dissertation containing three essays. In the first essay, I create a panel data set of North-South preferential trade agreements (PTAs) building on the comprehensive database on the design of trade agreements (DESTA). I analyze the effects of the depth and number of PTAs signed on the quality of institutions in developing countries, the global South, measured as the political risk component investment profile of the ICRG database. I show that the system GMM is the appropriate estimator to apply for my empirical analysis to account for various sources of endogeneity. I show that signing deep North-South PTAs positively affects institutions in the South. The results differ with respect to the type of agreement and region. The second essay deals with the determinants of PTAs focusing on institutional distance as a driving factor and regarding PTAs as an instrument to compensate for missing institutions. I argue that the effect of institutional distance is specifically important (1) in a North-South trade relationship where institutional distance is particularly large and (2) if countries trade a large share of contract-intensive goods. For this analysis I create a panel data set including a large number of developing countries and a variable to measure the difference of the share of bilateral contract-intensive exports and show that a linear probability model for discrete choice panel data is a suitable estimator to be used. I address endogeneity using an instrument variable (IV) approach. I show that institutional distance promotes the formation of PTAs. Comparing this effect for North-North, North-South, and South-South country pairs reveals that the positive effect of institutional distance on the probability of PTA formation is specifically high for the formation of North-South PTAs. Furthermore, I find that the effect is nonlinear and that trading contract-intensive goods reinforces the positive effect of institutional distance for the formation of North-South PTAs and may offset negative effects. Robustness checks with regard to the underlying sample reveal that the effect of institutional distance is driven by North-South relationships involving the EU. Essay 3 is dedicated to global investment flows and aims at deriving a global model to determine the factors of foreign direct investment (FDI) by considering investment flows between and within North and South. We empirically estimate and assess global FDI models, namely the gravity and knowledge capital (KK) model, based on the new CDIS data set by the IMF, which includes a large number of developing and transition countries. This allows us to detect potential vertical motives for FDI and to address the global trend of increasing FDI from and to the global South. We find the gravity model to achieve the best theory-consistent out-of-sample prediction, particularly when parameter heterogeneity of South and North FDI is allowed for. Controlling for surrounding market potential is important to recover the horizontal effect of the gravity model. Including institutional, cultural, or financial factors does not improve the model performance distinctly although results for those variables are mostly in line with theory.