Erholung verliert an Fahrt – Wirtschaft und Politik weiter im Zeichen der Pandemie
Dienstleistungsauftrag des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Energie,
No. 2,
2020
Abstract
Infolge der im In- und Ausland ergriffenen Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Corona-Pandemie ist die deutsche Wirtschaftsleistung in der ersten Jahreshälfte drastisch gesunken, wobei sich der Einbruch auf die Monate März und April konzentrierte. Schon im Mai setzte eine kräftige Gegenbewegung ein, die sich in nahezu allen Branchen bis zum aktuellen Rand fortsetzte. Dieser Erholungsprozess dürfte aber zunehmend an Fahrt verlieren. Denn Nachholeffekte laufen aus, einige Branchen sind weiterhin erheblichen Einschränkungen ausgesetzt und die für die deutsche Wirtschaft wichtige globale Investitionstätigkeit dürfte noch für einige Zeit geschwächt bleiben. Die Institute erwarten daher nach einem Rückgang des Bruttoinlandsproduktes um 5,4% in diesem Jahr nur ein Zuwachs um 4,7% im kommenden Jahr und 2,7% im Jahr 2022. Sie revidieren damit ihre Prognose gegenüber dem Frühjahr für das laufende und das kommende Jahr um jeweils gut 1 Prozentpunkt nach unten. Grund dafür ist, dass der weitere Erholungsprozess nunmehr etwas schwächer eingeschätzt wird als noch im Frühjahr.
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Birds, Birds, Birds: Co-worker Similarity, Workplace Diversity and Job Switches
Boris Hirsch, Elke J. Jahn, Thomas Zwick
British Journal of Industrial Relations,
No. 3,
2020
Abstract
We investigate how the demographic composition of the workforce along the sex, nationality, education, age and tenure dimensions affects job switches. Fitting duration models for workers’ job‐to‐job turnover rate that control for workplace fixed effects in a representative sample of large manufacturing plants in Germany during 1975–2016, we find that larger co‐worker similarity in all five dimensions substantially depresses job‐to‐job moves, whereas workplace diversity is of limited importance. In line with conventional wisdom, which has that birds of a feather flock together, our interpretation of the results is that workers prefer having co‐workers of their kind and place less value on diverse workplaces.
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Coal Phase-out in Germany – Implications and Policies for Affected Regions
Pao-Yu Oei, Hauke Hermann, Philipp Herpich, Oliver Holtemöller, Benjamin Lünenbürger, Christoph Schult
Energy,
April
2020
Abstract
The present study examines the consequences of the planned coal phase-out in Germany according to various phase-out pathways that differ in the ordering of power plant closures. Soft-linking an energy system model with an input-output model and a regional macroeconomic model simulates the socio-economic effects of the phase-out in the lignite regions, as well as in the rest of Germany. The combination of two economic models offers the advantage of considering the phase-out from different perspectives and thus assessing the robustness of the results. The model results show that the lignite coal regions will exhibit losses in output, income and population, but a faster phase-out would lead to a quicker recovery. Migration to other areas in Germany and demographic changes will partially compensate for increasing unemployment, but support from federal policy is also necessary to support structural change in these regions.
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National Culture and Housing Credit
Chrysovalantis Gaganis, Iftekhar Hasan, Fotios Pasiouras
Journal of Empirical Finance,
March
2020
Abstract
Using a sample of around 30 countries over the period 2001–2015, this study provides evidence that deeply rooted cultural differences are significantly associated with the use of mortgage debt. More detailed, we find that power distance and uncertainty avoidance have a negative impact on the value of the total outstanding residential loans to GDP. This finding is robust across various specifications and the use of alternative measures of mortgage debt. In contrast, trust has a positive and robust impact on all the measures of mortgage debt. Other dimensions of national culture like long-term orientation, individualism, and indulgence, also appear to matter; however, their impact depends on the control variables and the employed measure of mortgage debt.
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Profit Shifting and Tax‐rate Uncertainty
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Panagiotis I. Karavitis
Journal of Business Finance and Accounting,
5-6
2020
Abstract
Using firm‐level data for 1,084 parent firms in 24 countries and for 9,497 subsidiaries in 54 countries, we show that tax‐motivated profit shifting is larger among subsidiaries in countries that have stable corporate tax rates over time. Our findings further suggest that firms move away from transfer pricing and toward intragroup debt shifting that has lower adjustment costs. Our results are robust to several identification methods and respecifications, and they highlight the important role of tax‐rate uncertainty in the profit‐shifting decision while pointing to an adjustment away from more costly transfer pricing and toward debt shifting.
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Financial Incentives and Loan Officer Behavior: Multitasking and Allocation of Effort under an Incomplete Contract
Patrick Behr, Alejandro H. Drexler, Reint E. Gropp, Andre Guettler
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis,
No. 4,
2020
Abstract
We investigate the implications of providing loan officers with a nonlinear compensation structure that rewards loan volume and penalizes poor performance. Using a unique data set provided by a large international commercial bank, we examine the main activities that loan officers perform: loan prospecting, screening, and monitoring. We find that when loan officers are at risk of losing their bonuses, they increase prospecting and monitoring. We further show that loan officers adjust their behavior more toward the end of the month when bonus payments are approaching. These effects are more pronounced for loan officers with longer tenures at the bank.
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Comparing Financial Transparency between For-profit and Nonprofit Suppliers of Public Goods: Evidence from Microfinance
John W. Goodell, Abhinav Goyal, Iftekhar Hasan
Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money,
January
2020
Abstract
Previous research finds market financing is favored over relationship financing in environments of better governance, since the transaction costs to investors of vetting asymmetric information are thereby reduced. For industries supplying public goods, for-profits rely on market financing, while nonprofits rely on relationships with donors. This suggests that for-profits will be more inclined than nonprofits to improve financial transparency. We examine the impact of for-profit versus nonprofit status on the financial transparency of firms engaged with supplying public goods. There are relatively few industries that have large number of both for-profit and nonprofit firms across countries. However, the microfinance industry provides the opportunity of a large number of both for-profit and nonprofit firms in relatively equal numbers, across a wide array of countries. Consistent with our prediction, we find that financial transparency is positively associated with a for-profit status. Results will be of broad interest both to scholars interested in the roles of transparency and transaction costs on market versus relational financing; as well as to policy makers interested in the impact of for-profit on the supply of public goods, and on the microfinance industry in particular.
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Avoiding the Fall into the Loop: Isolating the Transmission of Bank-to-Sovereign Distress in the Euro Area
Stefan Eichler, Hannes Böhm
Journal of Financial Stability,
December
2020
Abstract
While the sovereign-bank loop literature has demonstrated the amplification between sovereign and bank risks in the Euro Area, its econometric identification is vulnerable to reverse causality and omitted variable biases. We address the loop's endogenous nature and isolate the direct bank-to-sovereign distress channel by exploiting the global, non-Eurozone related variation in banks’ stock prices. We instrument banking sector stock returns in the Eurozone with exposure-weighted stock market returns from non-Eurozone countries and take further precautions to remove Eurozone-related variation. We find that the transmission of instrumented bank distress to sovereign distress is around 50% smaller than the corresponding coefficient in the unadjusted OLS framework, confirming concerns on endogeneity. Despite the smaller relative magnitude, increasing instrumented bank distress is found to be an economically and statistically significant cause for rising sovereign fragility in the Eurozone.
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What Drives Innovation Output from Subsidized R&D Cooperation? — Project-level Evidence from Germany
Michael Schwartz, Michael Fritsch, Jutta Günther, François Peglow
Technovation,
No. 6,
2012
Abstract
Using a large dataset of 406 subsidized R&D cooperation projects, we provide detailed insights into the relationship between project characteristics and innovation output. Patent applications and publications are used as measures for the innovation output of an R&D project. We find that large-firm involvement is strongly positively related with the number of patent applications, but not with the number of publications. Conversely, university involvement has positive effects on projects’ innovation output in terms of the number of publications but not in terms of patent applications. In general, projects’ funding as measure of projects’ size is an important predictor of the innovation output of R&D cooperation projects. No significant effects are found for the number of partners as (an alternative) measure of projects’ size, for spatial proximity between cooperation partners, for the involvement of a public institute for applied research, and for prior cooperation experiences. We derive conclusions for the design of R&D cooperation support schemes.
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Getting out of the Ivory Tower - New Perspectives on the Entrepreneurial University
Jutta Günther, Kerstin Wagner
Discussion Papers on Entrepreneurship and Innovation,
No. 2,
2007
Abstract
Based on theoretical considerations about the “third mission” of universities and the discussion of the nature of different university-industry relations, we conclude that the entrepreneurial university is a manifold institution with direct ways to transfer technology from academia to industry as well as indirect connections to industry via entrepreneurship education and training. While existing literature usually deals with one or another linking mechanism separately, our central hypothesises is that direct and indirect mechanisms should be interrelated and mutually complementary. We emphasize the importance of a more holistic view and empirically investigate the scope and interrelatedness of entrepreneurship education and direct technology transfer mechanisms at German universities. We find a variety of activities in both fields and evidence for an identification of HEI with the mission of knowledge commercialisation. Furthermore, it shows that the HEIs’ technology transfer facilities and the entrepreneurship education providers co-operate in support of the creation of spin-offs and innovative start-ups.
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