Publikationen

The paper analyzes how the removal of barriers to entry in banking affect loan competition, bank stability and economic welfare. We consider a model of spatial loan competition where a market that is served by less efficient banks is opened to entry by banks that are more efficient in screening borrowers. It is shown that there is typically too little entry and that market shares of entrant banks are too small relative to their socially optimal level. This is because efficient banks internalize only the private but not the public benefits of their better credit assessments. Only when bank failure is very likely or very costly, socially harmful entry can occur.

This study examines the impact of university spillovers on the locational choice of firm formation. Based on a unique and hand-collected data set of high-technology start-ups publicly listed in Germany, this paper tests the propositions that geographic proximity to the university is influenced by the kind of science and type of knowledge spillover. The results provide evidence that while academic research spillovers by articles and graduates seem to be less important as a location decision in the past, become a significant determinant for young and high-tech firms.

This paper identifies the decreasing heterogeneity in labor as one of the driving forces of secular trade liberalization. A decrease in the sector-specificity of human capital gives rise to a decline of protectionist demands since the workers stakes in trade policy resemble more and more the social welfare consequences of trade policy. Since the process of labor homogenization appears to be irreversible we arrive at the conclusion that protectionist trade polices will soon become an obsolescent model.

In theory, the IMF could influence economic growth via several channels, among them advice to policy makers, money disbursed under its programs, and its conditionality. This paper tries to disentangle those effects empirically. Using panel data for 98 countries over the period 1970-2000 it analyzes whether IMF involvement influences economic growth in program countries. Consistent with the results of previous studies, it is shown that IMF programs reduce growth rates when their endogeneity is accounted for. There is only weak evidence that compliance with conditionality mitigates this negative effect. IMF loans have no statistically significant impact.

We study the implications of ownership and its induced incentives on firm performance for young and high-tech firms. Using a unique data set of all 341 firms listed on the Neuer Markt, the German counterpart of the NASDAQ, our results differ from studies on more traditional firms. Ownership by CEOs has no influence on firm survival when introducing measurements of human capital and intellectual property rights. This confirms assumptions that firms in the knowledge based industries differ also in their governance structure from traditional firms.

This paper focuses on the causal effect of overqualification on earnings. Although the issue of overqualification has recently been addressed by quite a huge body of literature there are only few studies examining the causal effect of overqualification on earnings in the sense of Rubin s potential outcome approach. Since for non-experimental data settings the incident of overqualification is not a random event, ignoring selfselection into overqualification leads to a misinterpretation of the empirical results and misleading policy conclusions, since the effect of overqualification on earnings cannot be interpreted causally.
Using a cross-section of 1188 workers from the GSOEP we apply a Bayesian approach based on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to estimate various treatment effects of overqualification on earnings. Our findings seriously question results ignoring selectivity effects and point out that on average for the overeducated an appropriate job match would not lead to higher earnings.

In diesem Beitrag soll ein Überblick über den Handel von Kreditrisiken gegeben werden. Dazu werden die wichtigsten Instrumente vorgestellt ebenso wie die Entwicklung der zugehörigen Märkte. Die Vertragsgestaltung wird insbesondere aus dem Blickwinkel untersucht, negative Effekte von Informationsasymmetrien einzuschränken. Es zeigt sich, dass das Ausmaß der Informationsasymmetrie die Vertragsgestaltung erheblich beeinflusst. Da solche Asymmetrien den Handel von Kreditrisiken tendenziell einschränken, wird der Risikotransfer an einem Praxisbeispiel untersucht.

In this paper we analyse the effect of immigration on the labour market conditions for different skill groups. We develop a model of endogenous labour supply in which immigration affects educational decisions. We show how the skill premium changes with immigration of low skilled labour under flexible and rigid wages. Depending on the labour market institutions, immigration of low skilled labour is absorbed either by an increased skill premium or increased unemployment of low skilled labour. Thus, we extend the existing explanations of changing skill premia and unemployment of low skilled labour experienced during the last decades. Our model gives a rationale for the debate on immigration of high skilled workers as a way to reduce unemployment of low skilled workers in highly rigid labour markets.