Publikationen

We show that discretionary policymaking can lead to multiple rational-expectations equilibria where the central bank responds to inflation sentiments, which are driven by past endogenous variables but are unrelated to current economic fundamentals. Some of these equilibria have favourable consequences for welfare, resulting in outcomes superior even to those achieved under timeless-perspective commitment. Inflation sentiments also provide a novel explanation for the sizeable macroeconomic fluctuations in many countries in the 1970s. Compared to interest-rate rules violating the Taylor principle, our explanation has the advantage of providing a rationale for why central banks that are confronted with inefficiently large macroeconomic fluctuations may not be able to deviate to new policies with superior macroeconomic outcomes. Moreover, we show that our approach provides an alternative explanation for the high degree of inflation persistence found in the data.

Do male‐biased labour demand shocks affect women's labour market outcomes? To study this question, we examine large oil field discoveries in the southern USA from 1900 to 1940. We find that oil wealth has an overall positive effect on female labour force participation that is driven by single women. While oil discoveries increase demand for male labour and raise male wages, they do not drive women out of the tradable goods sector or the labour force. Our findings suggest that the absence of any crowding out effects of oil wealth can be explained by compensating forces such as demand effects within the tradable sector, or by income effects that lead to growth in the non‐tradable sector.

This paper studies how tax evasion in the self-employment sector affects aggregate outcomes and welfare. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with incomplete markets in which heterogeneous agents choose between being a worker or self-employed. Self-employed agents may misreport their business income but face the risk of being detected by the tax authorities. Our model replicates important quantitative features of the U.S. economy in terms of income, wealth, self-employment, and misreporting. Tax evasion alleviates credit constraints and leads to a larger self-employment sector but reduces the average size and productivity of self-employed businesses. Tax evasion generates positive welfare effects for the self-employed at the expense of the workers.

Obwohl der berufsschulische ERP-Einsatz in der einschlägigen Literatur seit geraumer Zeit diskutiert wird, gibt es bis heute kaum robuste empirische Untersuchungen zu dessen Wirksamkeit als Lernmittel zum Aufbau von über Bedienfertigkeiten hinausgehendem Wissen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht diese Effekte im Rahmen von 2 Teilstudien mittels eines (quasi-)experimentellen Pre-/Posttest-Designs. In Studie 1 (n = 279 Industriekaufleute und n = 223 Einzelhandelskaufleute) zeigt die Versuchsgruppe vergleichbare Lerneffekte beim Aufbau des Geschäftsprozesswissens wie die Kontrollgruppe. In der darauf aufbauenden Studie 2 (n = 142 Industriekaufleute) wurde die ERP-Umgebung fachdidaktisch elaborierter eingebettet. Hier zeigt sich ein mittelstarker Effekt zugunsten der Versuchsgruppe (β = .224, p = .006, d = .57).

A comparative inspection of the rules of cross-border pension taxation across member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that the existing pattern is extremely diverse and inconsistent and generates unfair outcomes for individuals and for countries. This article argues that this double fairness dilemma cannot be solved within the current network of double taxation treaties. Instead, it proposes a new approach for the taxation of old-age pensions in a world of high and increasing cross-border mobility of workers and pensioners. The article demonstrates that a coordinated move to frontloaded pension taxation would pave the way for an international pension tax order that eliminates the double fairness dilemma. An additional innovative element of frontloaded pension taxation is presented: the separation of individual tax assessment and tax payment, which may help curb political opposition against frontloaded pension taxation and smooth transitional effects after its introduction.

Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of social norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show that this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel and that the intervention made perceptions of social norms converge to the actual prevalent norm.

We study the choice of a principal to either delegate a decision to a group of careerist experts or to consult them individually and keep the decision-making power. Our model predicts a trade-off between information acquisition and information aggregation. On the one hand, the expected benefit from being informed is larger in case the experts are consulted individually. Hence, the experts either acquire the same or a larger amount of information, depending on the cost of information, than in case of delegation. On the other hand, any acquired information is better aggregated in the case of delegation, in which experts can deliberate secretly. To test the model’s key predictions, we run an experiment. The results from the laboratory confirm the predicted trade-off despite some deviations from theory on the individual level.

Human behavior can have effects on oneself and externalities on others. Mask wearing is such a behavior in the current pandemic. What motivates people to wear face masks in public when mask wearing is voluntary or not enforced? Which benefits should the policy makers rather emphasize in information campaigns—the reduced chances of getting the SARS-CoV-2 virus (benefits for oneself) or the reduced chances of transmitting the virus (benefits for others in the society)? In this paper, we link measured risk preferences and other-regarding preferences to mask wearing habits among 840 surveyed employees of two large Swiss hospitals. We find that the leading mask-wearing motivations change with age: While for older people, mask wearing habits are best explained by their self-regarding risk preferences, younger people are also motivated by other-regarding concerns. Our results are robust to different specifications including linear probability models, probit models and Lasso covariate selection models. Our findings thus allow drawing policy implications for effectively communicating public-health recommendations to frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inequality of opportunity, particularly when overlaid with socioeconomic, ethnic, or cultural differences, may limit the scope of cooperation between individuals. A central question, then, is how to overcome such obstacles to cooperation. We study this question in the context of Germany, by asking whether the propensity of immigrant youth to cooperate with native peers was affected by a major integration reform: the introduction of birthright citizenship. Our unique setup exploits data from a large-scale lab-in-the-field experiment in a quasi-experimental evaluation framework. We find that the policy caused male, but not female, immigrants to significantly increase their cooperativeness toward natives. We show that the increase in out-group cooperation among immigrant boys is an outcome of more trust rather than a reflection of stronger other-regarding preferences towards natives. In exploring factors that may explain these behavioral effects, we present evidence that the policy also led to a near-closure of the educational achievement gap between young immigrant men and their native peers. Our results highlight that, through integration interventions, governments can modify prosocial behavior in a way that generates higher levels of efficiency in the interaction between social groups.

Selective attrition out of longitudinal datasets is a concern for empirical researchers. This note illustrates a simple way to identify potential attrition bias in panel surveys by exploiting multiple types of simultaneous entries into a panel survey. The little-known phenomenon of natural refreshments, which adds to entries through refreshments induced by data collectors, allows for attrition bias to be disentangled from measurement errors connected to differences in participation experience (i.e. panel conditioning). A demonstrative application on subjective data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) serves as an example and offers insights on health- and happiness-related attrition in panel surveys.

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Ausgehend von einem Rahmenmodell zur Gestaltung technologisch unterstützter adaptiver Lehr- und Lernprozesse werden in unserem konzeptionellen Beitrag Implikationen auf pädagogisch-didaktischer, diagnostischer sowie technologischer Ebene beschrieben. Letzterer Aspekt wird gestützt mit den Ergebnissen einer Sichtung verfügbarer Systeme und deren Funktionen zur Unterstützung der datengestützten Entscheidungsfindung. Bei einer hypothesengeleiteten diagnostischen Vorgehensweise hinsichtlich einer adaptiven Unterrichtsgestaltung erscheint auf pädagogisch-didaktischer Ebene ein erweitertes Verständnis von „Heterogenität“ erforderlich, welches auf diagnostischer sowie technologischer Ebene entsprechend abzubilden ist.

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dc.contributor.author: Hillman, Arye L.