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Unsägliche Industriepolitik und ein übergriffiger StaatReint GroppThe Pioneer, 1. März 2025
Why are children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) substantially less likely to be enrolled in child care? We study whether barriers in the application process work against lower-SES children — the group known to benefit strongest from child care enrollment. In an RCT in Germany with highly subsidized child care (N = 607), we offer treated families information and personal assistance for applications. We find substantial, equity-enhancing effects of the treatment, closing half of the large SES gap in child care enrollment. Increased enrollment for lower-SES families is likely driven by altered application knowledge and behavior. We discuss scalability of our intervention and derive policy implications for the design of universal child care programs.
The establishment of the European Banking Union constitutes a major change in the regulatory framework of the banking system. Main parts are implemented via directives that show staggered transposition timing across EU member states. Based on the newly compiled Banking Union Directives Database, we assess how banks’ funding costs responded to the Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV). Our findings show an upward trend in funding costs which is driven by an increase in cost of equity and partially offset by a decline in cost of debt. The diverging trends are most present in countries with an ex-ante lower regulatory capital stringency, which is in line with banks’ short-run adjustment needs but longer-run benefits from increased financial stability.
We test whether organizational risk management matters to bondholders of U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs), and find that debt financing costs increase when the BHC has lower-quality risk management. Consistent with bailouts giving rise to moral hazard among bank creditors, we find that bondholders put less emphasis on risk management in large institutions for which bailouts are expected ex-ante. BHCs that maintained strong risk management before the financial crisis had lower debt costs during and after the crisis, compared to other banks. Overall, quality risk management can curtail risk exposures at BHCs and result in lower debt costs.
Eine zähe Konjunkturschwäche, schwindende Wachstumskräfte und ein stark erhöhter Krankenstand führen zur Unterauslastung der Produktionskapazitäten. Außen- wie binnenwirtschaftlich gibt es mehr Gegen- als Rückenwind. Hoffnung geben die Wirksamkeit der höheren Lohnabschlüsse 2024 und 2025, die für einen Anstieg des privaten Konsums sorgen können und gesamtdeutsche Rekordwerte für die Einnahmenquote der öffentlichen Hand. Eine Reform der Schuldenbremse durch stufenweises regelgebundenes Aktivieren nach einer Notlage und ein Hebesatz auf die Einkommensteuer könnten die Konjunkturabhängigkeit der Bundes- und Länderfinanzen verringern. Die Inflation dürfte 2024 auf 2,6 % zurückgehen.
We investigate the relationships among search symbols, trading performance, and investor participation. We use two specific datasets from Google Trends’ search volume index. The search volume by number ticker significantly predicts high returns and high investor participation when applied by active retail investors investing in large firms. This does not hold true for less active retail investors who use Chinese company name tickers as their search terms. Our results indicate that the heuristic usage of number tickers to search for company information helps active retail investors to obtain better trading performance compared with less active retail investors who use Chinese company name tickers.
