Publikationen

While the COVID-19 pandemic had a large and asymmetric impact on firms, many countries quickly enacted massive business rescue programs which are specifically targeted to smaller firms. Little is known about the effects of such policies on business entry and exit, investment, factor reallocation, and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper builds a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous and financially constrained firms in order to evaluate the short- and long-term consequences of small firm rescue programs in a pandemic recession. We calibrate the stationary equilibrium and the pandemic shock to the U.S. economy, taking into account the factual Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as a specific policy. We find that the policy has only a modest impact on aggregate output and employment because (i) jobs are saved predominately in the smallest firms that account for a minor share of employment and (ii) the grant reduces the reallocation of resources towards larger and less impacted firms. Much of the reallocation effects occur in the aftermath of the pandemic episode. By preventing inefficient liquidations, the policy dampens the long-term declines of aggregate consumption and of the real wage, thus delivering small welfare gains.

The study aims to identify profiles of trainee teachers in terms of their stress and work experiences and to uncover profile differences in regard to dropout intentions and perceived relationships between trainee teachers and their mentors. Based on data from 1,756 German trainee teachers, three distinct stress and work experience profiles could be identified. Trainee teachers with high levels of stress and negative work experiences exhibit higher dropout intentions and experience their relationship with their mentors as less transparent, fair and trusting, and more ambivalent compared to trainee teachers with low levels of stress and positive work experiences. The results underline the importance of the relationship between mentors and trainee teachers for the professional development of future teachers.

Since gaining independence, Ukraine has recognised the need to reform its vocational education and training (VET) system to better align with new economic realities. This necessity was largely driven by the country's increasing openness to the world and its desire to integrate with the European Union, which became especially pronounced after the Euromaidan protests in 2014. As a result, the government has pursued policies that are more closely aligned with the European Union. This led to greater international cooperation in the sphere of VET in Ukraine. The study on which this article reports analyses the impact of international organisations and cooperation programmes, as well as actions, initiatives and projects, on the changes and reforms in the Ukrainian VET system from 2013 to 2022 on normative and institutional levels. We adopt a theoretical framework that explains the areas and instruments of influence on policymaking in education used by international organisations. The method applied in the study is interviews with experts from international projects and initiatives currently active in Ukraine. Our findings indicate that international cooperation programmes have had a significant impact on the development of vocational education in Ukraine, particularly in areas such as the governance of the VET system, public‐private partnerships, quality assurance, qualifications frameworks, and digitalisation.

While laboratory and field experiments are the major items in the toolbox of behavioral economists, household panel studies can complement them and expand their research potential. We introduce the German Socio-Economic Panel’s Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS), which offers researchers detailed panel data and the possibility to collect personalized experimental and survey data for free. We discuss what SOEP-IS can offer to behavioral economists and illustrate a set of design ideas with examples. Although we build our discussion on SOEP-IS, our purpose is to provide a guide that can be generalized to other household panel studies as well.

stratEst is a software package for strategy frequency estimation in the freely available statistical computing environment R (R Development Core Team in R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, 2022). The package aims at minimizing the start-up costs of running the modern strategy frequency estimation techniques used in experimental economics. Strategy frequency estimation (Stahl and Wilson in J Econ Behav Organ 25: 309–327, 1994; Stahl and Wilson in Games Econ Behav, 10: 218–254, 1995) models the choices of participants in an economic experiment as a finite-mixture of individual decision strategies. The parameters of the model describe the associated behavior of each strategy and its frequency in the data. stratEst provides a convenient and flexible framework for strategy frequency estimation, allowing the user to customize, store and reuse sets of candidate strategies. The package includes useful functions for data processing and simulation, strategy programming, model estimation, parameter testing, model checking, and model selection.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) based simulation and training is gaining increasing importance in vocational education and training (VET). However, while IVR is primarily investigated and utilized in technical domains, its implementation and the resulting effects in commercial education remain largely unexplored. Moreover, the experience of motion sickness is a widely reported phenomenon while using IVR, which can interfere with cognitive processes and should therefore be considered more closely in terms of learning and instruction. This explorative study focuses on domain-specific knowledge acquisition in vocational apprenticeship for retailers and the accompanying side effects on students’ wellbeing in an IVR-based learning environment. For this purpose, an IVR-based scenario in a virtual supermarket was developed and tested with trainees in the field of retail at a German commercial vocational school. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, we compared the effects of IVR-based and conventional instruction on domain-specific knowledge acquisition in a sample of first-year trainees ( N  = 79). The findings indicate an advantage of IVR in the acquisition of domain-specific knowledge ( ɳ²  = .261). Although moderate motion sickness symptoms were reported in the experimental group, no direct links between the experience of motion sickness and learning outcomes could be identified. These findings advance the current knowledge about learning-related effects of IVR-based instruction in the field of VET and provide further understanding about the special conditions of IVR scenarios conducive to learning.

In this paper, we explore the life cycle consumption-savings problem in a stylized model with a risk-free investment opportunity, a tax-deferred retirement account, and deterministic labor income. Our closed form solutions show that liquidity constraints can be severely binding; in particular in situations with a high growth rate of labor income, in which retirement saving is optimally postponed. With a tax-deferred account, it is always optimal to save in this (illiquid) account first before saving in the (liquid) taxable account in order to satisfy the needs for consumption smoothing. The optimal retirement savings pattern is far from the widespread practice of contributing a fixed fraction of current labor income over the working life to a tax-deferred environment.

Studien zu schulischen Lehrkräften sowie Befunde aus der Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie belegen, dass das berufliche Verantwortungsgefühl in positivem Zusammenhang mit Motivation und Engagement steht. Die vorliegende Studie in der Zeitschrift Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) geht deshalb der Fragestellung nach, inwieweit sich Weiterbildner/innen verantwortlich fühlen in Bezug auf unterschiedliche Trainingsresultate. Dazu wurden bei einer Online-Befragung N  = 393 Trainer/innen aus dem Bereich der berufsbezogenen Weiterbildung gebeten, sowohl ihre persönliche Verantwortung als auch die von außen zugewiesene Verantwortung im Rahmen eines konkreten Trainings rückblickend einzuschätzen. Zunächst ergab eine explorative Faktorenanalyse mit Varimax-Rotation für die beiden Verantwortungskonzepte jeweils zwei Faktoren, die Verantwortung für kurzfristige Trainingsergebnisse sowie die Verantwortung für langfristige Trainingsergebnisse . Anschließende Mittelwertvergleiche führten zu dem weiteren Ergebnis, dass bezüglich langfristiger Ergebnisse die persönliche Verantwortung von Trainer/innen geringer ausfällt als die zugewiesene Verantwortung ( p  < 0,001, d  = 0,33). Ferner zeigte sich, dass Trainer/innen hinsichtlich kurzfristiger Ergebnisse wie der Zufriedenheit oder des Lernerfolgs der Teilnehmenden mehr Verantwortung verspüren als für langfristige Trainingsergebnisse wie den Transfer oder die verbesserte Arbeitsleistung der Teilnehmenden ( p  < 0,001, d  = 0,82), was im Einklang steht mit sowohl theoretischen Überlegungen bezüglich der generellen Verantwortlichkeit von Lehrenden im Lernprozess als auch mit einzelnen empirischen Befunden zu Trainer/innen. Mit Blick auf die Weiterbildungspraxis werden schließlich Ansätze diskutiert, wie das Verantwortungsgefühl der Lehrenden gestärkt werden kann.

We propose how to bid in first-price auctions when a bidder knows the own value but not how others will bid. To do this, we introduce a methodology to show how to make choices in strategic settings without assuming common knowledge or equilibrium behavior. Accordingly, we first eliminate environments that are believed not to occur and then find a robust rule that performs well in the remaining environments. We test our bids using data from laboratory experiments and the field and find that our bids outperform those made by real bidders.

Mandatory filings for UK hedge funds suggest that managers having worked at the same prior employer invest more similarly in terms of distances of returns. If they overlapped in employment, increasing the chance of social ties, investments become even more similar. The joint effect accounts for up to two thirds of the difference in investing behavior. Results are robust to fund- and manager-level controls as well as to identification concerns. With controls, the same-employer effect is concentrated in the systematic component (beta), whereas the overlap effect is concentrated in the idiosyncratic components (alpha and residuals). Managerial ties make any two funds more similar in their stock holdings. Moreover, portfolios of connected funds outperform their peers in terms of alpha, return volatility, and Sharpe ratio.

Anonymous and unannounced worksite inspections known as ``Mystery Shopping'' (MS) are common in multi-site service firms, but little is known about the strategic importance of this practice. We conceptualize MS as a monitoring tool firms use to implement the optimal allocation of site resources between sales- and service-related activities in the presence of cross-site reputation spillovers, which is to maximize sales while maintaining service standards. Consistent with this view, data from three retail chains reveal (i) low variation in MS scores, (ii) little correlation of MS scores with sales, and iii) high correlation of sites' MS scores with the likelihood of their supervisors receiving incentive bonuses. Our findings are robust to different model specifications, and shed new light on a ubiquitous yet little-studied management practice.

Der Fokus der vorliegenden Untersuchung liegt auf der Weiterbildungsberatung, insbesondere auf dem Beratungswissen des Weiterbildungspersonals mit seinen verschiedenen Dimensionen. Um eine Eingrenzung zu erreichen, ist die Beratung als professionelle pädagogische Handlungsform Ausgangslage der Untersuchung. Auf Basis eines systematischen Literaturreviews werden Instrumente zur Erfassung von Beratungskompetenzen in Bildung, Beruf und Beschäftigung und in der sozialen Arbeit analysiert. Dabei untersuchen wir, inwiefern Beratungswissen in den Instrumenten konzeptualisiert und operationalisiert wird und ob diese für den Einsatz in der Weiterbildung geeignet sind. Hinsichtlich des Weiterbildungskontexts sind drei Instrumente prinzipiell einschlägig. Es zeigt sich aber, dass Wissen selten explizit erfasst wird. Forschungsdesiderate hinsichtlich der Operationalisierung des Beratungswissens von Weiterbildungspersonal werden diskutiert.

A vast literature has examined how perceptions of mobility shape demand for redistribution. These studies generally refer to contemporaneous tax policies demanded by those directly impacted. But social mobility is often measured as changes across generations. To account for these intergenerational effects, our analysis focuses on educational policies. We examine how social mobility at the district level explains legislative support for inclusive education policies. We first develop an electoral competition model where voters are altruistic parents, politicians are office seeking and the future economic status of the children is affected both by the degree of income mobility and by public education policies. We then analyze a newly compiled dataset of roll-call votes on California education legislation matched with electoral district levels of income mobility. In line with the model, our analysis suggests that upward mobility in a district negatively predicts legislative support for redistributive education bills.

Welche Schwerpunkte setzen Lehrende abhängig vom Weiterbildungsinhalt bei der Stützung transferförderlicher Maßnahmen? Um dies zu ermitteln, wurden in der vorliegenden Studie Lehrende aus der berufsbezogenen Weiterbildung ( N  = 418) mittels einer Online-Erhebung zu ihrem transferförderlichen Vorgehen befragt. Eine einfaktorielle MANOVA ergab für sämtliche Maßnahmenbereiche einen signifikanten Unterschied zwischen Soft Skills und Hard Skills Inhalten mit einer kleinen Effektstärke. Erwartungsgemäß wurde bei Soft Skills Weiterbildungen in sechs der sieben Bereiche Transfer signifikant stärker gestützt, wobei die Unterschiede am deutlichsten ausfielen für die Bereiche „Modellernen, Feedback und Reflexion“ sowie für „Transferzielplanung durch die Teilnehmenden“. Dagegen zeigte sich, dass bei Hard Skills Inhalten eher auf eine realitätsnahe Weiterbildungsumgebung geachtet wird, um einen nahen Transfer zu begünstigen. Zusätzliche Analysen ergaben, dass die vorgefundenen Unterschiede nicht durch die Qualifikation der Lehrenden in Form einer Trainerausbildung erklärbar sind. Insgesamt deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass eine konsequentere domänenspezifische Ausdifferenzierung in der Weiterbildungsforschung zielführend wäre. Zudem könnte eine Thematisierung der vorgefundenen domänenspezifischen Unterschiede in zukünftigen Fort- und Weiterbildungen für die Professionalisierung von Lehrenden sinnvoll sein.

I study auctions in which firms bid for licenses that reduce their marginal costs in a post-auction downstream market. When there are three or more firms, I show that the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) auction maximizes consumer surplus in dominant strategies if and only if it maximizes producer surplus in dominant strategies. With two firms, the effect on consumer surplus is ambiguous. When the VCG auction does not maximize consumer surplus, I show that consumer surplus can be maximized by adding caps, i.e., restricting the number of licenses a bidder can win. This might lower producer surplus.

Do trade unions benefit from economic crises by attracting new members among workers concerned about job security? To address this question, we provide a comprehensive empirical investigation based on panel data from Germany, where workers decide individually on their membership. We analyse whether exogenously manipulated perceptions of job insecurity encourage individuals to join a trade union. Firm-level workforce reductions serve as the first trigger of perceived job insecurity. Regional unemployment rates represent a second source of exogenous variation. Third, we propose a novel identification approach based on plant-closure-induced job losses of other workers in the same region. In each case, we exploit the longitudinal nature of the data to analyse the implications of changes in labour market conditions for changes in union membership using an instrumental variable approach. We find consistently that perceived job insecurity, as triggered by labour market turmoil, increases the likelihood of individual union membership. Analysing data on media coverage about downsizing in a complementary investigation, we add further evidence to the notion of trade unions as beneficiaries of labour market crises. Finally, we consider workers who lose their jobs and find no evidence of adverse effects on union membership among those affected directly by unemployment.