Plant-based Bioeconomy in Central Germany – A Mapping of Actors, Industries and Places
Wilfried Ehrenfeld, Frieder Kropfhäußer
Technology Analysis and Strategic Management,
No. 5,
2017
Abstract
The bioeconomy links industrial and agricultural research and production and is expected to provide growth, particularly in rural areas. However, it is still unclear which companies, research institutes and universities make up the bioeconomy. This makes it difficult to evaluate the policy measures that support the bioeconomy. The aim of this article is to provide an inventory of relevant actors in the three Central German states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. First we take an in-depth look at the different sectors, outline the industries involved, note the location and age of the enterprises and examine the distribution of important European industrial activity classification (NACE) codes. Our results underline the fact that established industry classifications are insufficient in identifying the plant-based bioeconomy population. We also question the overly optimistic statements regarding growth potentials in rural areas and employment potentials in general.
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Joint R&D Subsidies, Related Variety, and Regional Innovation
T. Broekel, Matthias Brachert, M. Duschl, T. Brenner
International Regional Science Review,
No. 3,
2017
Abstract
Subsidies for research and development (R&D) are an important tool of public R&D policy, which motivates extensive scientific analyses and evaluations. This article adds to this literature by arguing that the effects of R&D subsidies go beyond the extension of organizations’ monetary resources invested into R&D. It is argued that collaboration induced by subsidized joint R&D projects yield significant effects that are missed in traditional analyses. An empirical study on the level of German labor market regions substantiates this claim, showing that collaborative R&D subsidies impact regions’ innovation growth when providing access to related variety and embedding regions into central positions in cross-regional knowledge networks.
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Transposition Frictions, Banking Union, and Integrated Financial Markets in Europe
Michael Koetter, Thomas Krause, Lena Tonzer
G20 Insights Policy Brief, Policy Area "Financial Resilience",
2017
Abstract
In response to the financial crisis of 2007/2008, policymakers implemented comprehensive changes concerning the regulation and supervision of banks. Many of those changes, including Basel III or the directives pertaining to the Single Rulebook in the European Union (EU), are agreed upon at the supranational level, which constitutes a key step towards harmonized regulation and supervision in an integrated European financial market. However, the success of these reforms depends on the uniform and timely implementation at the national level. Avoiding strategic delays to implement EU regulation into national laws should thus constitute a main target of the G20.
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Skills, Earnings, and Employment: Exploring Causality in the Estimation of Returns to Skills
Franziska Hampf, Simon Wiederhold, Ludger Woessmann
Large-scale Assessments in Education,
No. 12,
2017
Abstract
Ample evidence indicates that a person’s human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the estimated returns can be causally interpreted. Using the PIAAC Survey of Adult Skills, this paper explores several approaches that aim to address potential threats to causal identification of returns to skills, in terms of both higher wages and better employment chances. We address measurement error by exploiting the fact that PIAAC measures skills in several domains. Furthermore, we estimate instrumental-variable models that use skill variation stemming from school attainment and parental education to circumvent reverse causation. Results show a strikingly similar pattern across the diverse set of countries in our sample. In fact, the instrumental-variable estimates are consistently larger than those found in standard least-squares estimations. The same is true in two “natural experiments,” one of which exploits variation in skills from changes in compulsory-schooling laws across U.S. states. The other one identifies technologically induced variation in broadband Internet availability that gives rise to variation in ICT skills across German municipalities. Together, the results suggest that least-squares estimates may provide a lower bound of the true returns to skills in the labor market.
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Drivers of Systemic Risk: Do National and European Perspectives Differ?
Claudia M. Buch, Thomas Krause, Lena Tonzer
Abstract
In Europe, the financial stability mandate generally rests at the national level. But there is an important exception. Since the establishment of the Banking Union in 2014, the European Central Bank (ECB) can impose stricter regulations than the national regulator. The precondition is that the ECB identifies systemic risks which are not adequately addressed by the macroprudential regulator at the national level. In this paper, we ask whether the drivers of systemic risk differ when applying a national versus a European perspective. We use market data for 80 listed euro-area banks to measure each bank’s contribution to systemic risk (SRISK) at the national and the euro-area level. Our research delivers three main findings. First, on average, systemic risk increased during the financial crisis. The difference between systemic risk at the national and the euro-area level is not very large, but there is considerable heterogeneity across countries and banks. Second, an exploration of the drivers of systemic risk shows that a bank’s contribution to systemic risk is positively related to its size and profitability. It decreases in a bank’s share of loans to total assets. Third, the qualitative determinants of systemic risk are similar at the national and euro-area level, whereas the quantitative importance of some determinants differs.
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Complex-task Biased Technological Change and the Labor Market
Colin Caines, Florian Hoffmann, Gueorgui Kambourov
Review of Economic Dynamics,
April
2017
Abstract
In this paper we study the relationship between task complexity and the occupational wage- and employment structure. Complex tasks are defined as those requiring higher-order skills, such as the ability to abstract, solve problems, make decisions, or communicate effectively. We measure the task complexity of an occupation by performing Principal Component Analysis on a broad set of occupational descriptors in the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) data. We establish four main empirical facts for the U.S. over the 1980–2005 time period that are robust to the inclusion of a detailed set of controls, subsamples, and levels of aggregation: (1) There is a positive relationship across occupations between task complexity and wages and wage growth; (2) Conditional on task complexity, routine-intensity of an occupation is not a significant predictor of wage growth and wage levels; (3) Labor has reallocated from less complex to more complex occupations over time; (4) Within groups of occupations with similar task complexity labor has reallocated to non-routine occupations over time. We then formulate a model of Complex-Task Biased Technological Change with heterogeneous skills and show analytically that it can rationalize these facts. We conclude that workers in non-routine occupations with low ability of solving complex tasks are not shielded from the labor market effects of automatization.
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11.04.2017 • 18/2017
The state as a pioneering customer: How public demand can drive private innovation
Especially in technology-intensive industries, demand from the state can expand private markets and create incentives for privately funded research and development, a new study by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association shows.
Viktor Slavtchev
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Coping with Change: International Differences in the Returns to Skills
Eric A. Hanushek, Guido Schwerdt, Simon Wiederhold, Ludger Woessmann
Economics Letters,
April
2017
Abstract
International data from the PIAAC survey allow estimation of comparable labor-market returns to skills for 32 countries. Returns to skills are larger in faster growing economies, consistent with the hypothesis that skills are particularly important for adaptation to economic change.
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Konjunktur aktuell: Beschäftigungsboom in Deutschland – aber gesamtwirtschaftlich keine Überhitzung
Oliver Holtemöller, Hans-Ulrich Brautzsch, Andrej Drygalla, Katja Heinisch, Martina Kämpfe, Konstantin Kiesel, Axel Lindner, Brigitte Loose, Jan-Christopher Scherer, Birgit Schultz, Matthias Wieschemeyer, Götz Zeddies
Konjunktur aktuell,
No. 1,
2017
Abstract
Die deutsche Wirtschaft ist in recht guter Verfassung. So hält der Beschäftigungsaufbau an, und der private Konsum legt aufgrund steigender Realeinkommen robust zu. Die Ausrüstungsinvestitionen werden allerdings weiterhin nur verhalten ausgeweitet. Insgesamt expandiert die Nachfrage in etwa so schnell wie das Produktionspotenzial, und die Auslastung ist normal. Im Jahr 2017 dürfte die Zuwachsrate des Bruttoinlandsprodukts mit 1,3% nicht aufgrund einer schwächeren Konjunktur, sondern vor allem wegen einer geringeren Anzahl an Arbeitstagen niedriger als im Vorjahr ausfallen.
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Mind the Gap: The Difference Between U.S. and European Loan Rates
Tobias Berg, Anthony Saunders, Sascha Steffen, Daniel Streitz
Review of Financial Studies,
No. 3,
2017
Abstract
We analyze pricing differences between U.S. and European syndicated loans over the 1992–2014 period. We explicitly distinguish credit lines from term loans. For credit lines, U.S. borrowers pay significantly higher spreads, but lower fees, resulting in similar total costs of borrowing in both markets. Credit line usage is more cyclical in the United States, which provides a rationale for the pricing structure difference. For term loans, we analyze the channels of the cross-country loan price differential and document the importance of: the composition of term loan borrowers and the loan supply by institutional investors and foreign banks.
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