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Media Response November 2024 IWH: Manchmal wäre der Schlussstrich die angemessenere Lösung in: TextilWirtschaft, 21.11.2024 IWH: Existenzgefahr Nun droht eine Pleitewelle in: DVZ…
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Alumni
IWH Alumni The IWH maintains contact with its former employees worldwide. We involve our alumni in our work and keep them informed, for example, with a newsletter. We also plan…
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Banking Reform, Risk-Taking, and Accounting Quality: Evidence from Post-Soviet Transition States
Yiwei Fang, Wassim Dbouk, Iftekhar Hasan, Lingxiang Li
Journal of International Accounting Research,
No. 1,
2022
Abstract
The drastic banking reform within Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union provides an ideal quasi-experimental design to examine the causal effects of institutional development on accounting quality (AQ). We find that banking reform spurs significant improvement in predictive power of earnings and reductions in earnings smoothing, earnings-inflating discretionary provisions, and avoidance of reporting losses. These effects hold under alternative model specifications and after considering concurrent institutional developments. In contrast, corporate reform shows no such effects, refuting the alternative explanation that unobserved factors affect both reform speed in general and the quality of financial reporting. We further identify four specific reformative actions that are integral to the drastic banking reform process where prudential regulation contributes the most to the observed AQ improvement. It supports the conjecture that banking reform improves AQ by reducing banks' risk-taking behaviors and, as a result, their motive behind accounting manipulation.
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Do courts matter for Firm Value? Evidence from the U.S. Court System
Stefano Colonnello, Christoph Herpfer
Journal of Law and Economics,
No. 2,
2021
Abstract
We estimate how US state courts impact firm value by exploiting a US Supreme Court ruling that exogenously changed firms’ exposure to different courts. We find that increased exposure to more business-friendly courts is associated with positive announcement returns. We find no such association for objective court quality. Consistent with the ruling impacting firm value through the legal environment channel, we find that effects are stronger for firms with high litigation exposure. We find that the ruling led to a shift in both the geographic distribution of lawsuits and operations of firms.
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Do Digital Information Technologies Help Unemployed Job Seekers Find a Job? Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany
Nicole Gürtzgen, André Diegmann, Laura Pohlan, Gerard J. van den Berg
European Economic Review,
February
2021
Abstract
This paper studies effects of the introduction of a new digital mass medium on reemployment of unemployed job seekers. We combine data on broadband internet availability at the local level with German individual register data. We address endogeneity by exploiting technological peculiarities that affected the roll-out of broadband internet. Results show that broadband internet improves reemployment rates after the first months in unemployment for males. Complementary analyses with survey data suggest that internet access mainly changes male job seekers’ search behavior by increasing online search and the number of job applications.
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01.07.2020 • 11/2020
New Horizon 2020 project: The Challenge of the Social Impact of Energy Transitions
Funded by the European Commission’s Framework Programme Horizon 2020, the ENTRANCES project recently closed its kick-off meeting with a high scientific and institutional participation, and taking on the challenge of modeling the social impact of the energy transition.
Oliver Holtemöller
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The Internet Effects on Sex Crime Offenses – Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany
André Diegmann
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,
September
2019
Abstract
This paper studies the effects of the introduction of a new mass medium on sex crime in Germany. I use unique data on criminal offenses and broadband internet measured at the municipal level to shed light on this issue. In order to address endogeneity in broadband internet availability, I exploit technical peculiarities at the regional level that determine the roll-out of high-speed internet. Results provide evidence of a substitution effect of internet exposure on sex crime. The substitution effect is neither driven by differences in reporting behavior, nor by matching processes at the victim and offender side. This suggests that the consumption of extreme media plays an important role in explaining the documented high-speed internet effect.
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Do Digital Information Technologies Help Unemployed Job Seekers Find a Job? Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany
Nicole Gürtzgen, André Diegmann, Laura Pohlan, Gerard J. van den Berg
Abstract
This paper studies effects of the introduction of a new digital mass medium on reemployment of unemployed job seekers. We combine data on high-speed (broadband) internet availability at the local level with German individual register data. We address endogeneity by exploiting technological peculiarities that affected the roll-out of high-speed internet. The results show that high-speed internet improves reemployment rates after the first months in unemployment. This is confirmed by complementary analyses with individual survey data suggesting that internet access increases online job search and the number of job interviews after a few months in unemployment.
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Do Courts Matter for Firm Value? Evidence from the U.S. Court System
Stefano Colonnello, Christoph Herpfer
Abstract
We estimate the impact of U.S. state court characteristics on firm value by exploiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that exogenously changed firms‘ exposure to different courts. We find that increased exposure to more business-friendly courts is associated with positive announcement returns. We find no such association for objective court quality. We confirm that this U.S. Supreme Court ruling impacted firm value through the legal environment channel. We show that this ruling reduced the ability of affected firms to remove cases from certain state courts, and we show that announcement returns are stronger for firms that have high litigation exposure.
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25 Jahre Deutsche Einheit: eine Erfolgsgeschichte?
Gerhard Heimpold, R. Land, K. Schroeder, Joachim Ragnitz
Wirtschaftsdienst,
2015
Abstract
Der Beitrag gibt ein Vierteljahrhundert nach Herstellung der Deutschen Einheit einen Überblick über den erreichten Stand der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung in Ostdeutschland. Ungeachtet erzielter Fortschritte hängt ein weiteres Aufholen vom erfolgreichen Strukturwandel ab.
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