Publications

Die dramatische Alterung der Bevölkerung stellt die deutsche Sozialversicherung in den Jahrzehnten bis 2060 vor gewaltige Herausforderungen: Entweder müssen die Beitragssätze um volle 20 Prozentpunkte angehoben oder die Leistungen im Vergleich zum momentanen Trend um ein Drittel gekürzt werden. Zudem klafft in dem ansonsten großzügigen deutschen Wohlfahrtsstaat eine erhebliche und ständig wachsende Deckungslücke bei der gesetzlichen Absicherung des Pflegekostenrisikos. Vor diesem Hintergrund beleuchten wir die Reformen, die in letzter Zeit an diesem System vorgenommen wurden, und begründen, warum – trotz Finanzkrise und Niedrigzinsphase – eine Verringerung der Deckungslücke durch ein Element der obligatorischen Kapitaldeckung vorgenommen werden sollte.

The paper explores the shift from course-based to state-wide exit examinations at the end of upper secondary education in Germany between 2007 and 2011, and whether this resulted in an increased standardisation of teacher-assigned course-based semester grades. The sample consisted of 253 (2007) and 338 students (2011) in math courses at advanced level (schools: N = 19). Analyses of subgroups of students based on gender, ethnicity, and family background revealed a significant difference in grades. Perhaps the enhanced correlations between the achievement test and the course-based semester grades are an effect of standardisation due to state-wide exit examinations. In contrast, when achievement was controlled for, the implementation of state-wide exit examinations did not increase the standardisation of course-based semester grades in the given time in the intended manner. The course-based semester grades continue to differ depending on students’ background. Several possible explanations for this result are discussed.

We present a novel approach for measuring democracy based on Support Vector Machines, a mathematical algorithm for pattern recognition. The Support Vector Machines Democracy Index (SVMDI) is continuous on the [0,1] interval and enables very detailed and sensitive measurement of democracy for 185 countries in the period between 1981 and 2011. Application of the SVMDI yields results which highlight a robust positive relationship between democracy and economic growth. We argue that the ambiguity in recent studies mainly originates from the lack of sensitivity of traditional democracy indicators. Analyzing transmission channels through which democracy exerts its influence on growth, we conclude that democratic countries feature better educated populations, higher investment shares, and lower fertility rates, but not necessarily higher levels of redistribution.

Background
In reference to the interactionist paradigm, we analyse how students’ emotional states during class are affected by student’ self-regulation, by time-varying characteristics within learning situations, and by the interaction of self-regulation abilities and learning situations during class.

Methods
We refer to existing empirical research on teaching and learning processes in vocational education and report findings from a process-oriented video study in naturalistic settings that was realised at a German vocational school. Altogether, 92 students were investigated during 1440 min of instruction by use of videography and continuous-state-sampling method (CSSM). The frequency of repeated measurement was 7 min, with 46–51 measures per student.

Results
Via latent class analysis, we first identified two types of students who differ in their self-regulation abilities. Then, a multilevel analysis revealed that students’ self-regulation affects students’ emotional states. In addition, we found that emotional states tend to be affected by the interaction of self-regulation and learning situations within lessons (but that’s just a sample-related and non-significant effect).

Conclusions
In view of a holistic understanding of teaching and learning processes in vocational education, a deeper knowledge surrounding the interdependencies between personality characteristics, emotional states, and learning situations seems to be essential for an evidence-based design for teaching and learning environments in vocational education and training.

Economic theory considers physical production characteristics and related property rights as key determinants of the organization of an industry. Yet, we frequently observe coexisting governance modes within industries and firms, even when the transaction attributes of a commodity are homogenous. We test whether risk and time preferences, price expectations, and trust in supply chain types can explain variations and coexistence in governance. Specifically, we experimentally elicit economic preferences of forest managers in the Swiss wood sector. We find that all behavioral dimensions are related to the choice of sales channel. Most importantly, trust and expectations are key determinants in transferring property rights, while risk aversion, patience, and ownership structure explain the existence of plural forms at the firm level.

Der Beitrag widmet sich der Frage, unter welchen Bedingungen intrinsisch motiviertes Lernen an Berufsschulen des dualen Ausbildungssystems begünstigt oder aber gehemmt wird. Dabei gilt unser Interesse der prognostischen Bedeutsamkeit verschiedener Merkmale der Auszubildenden, des erteilten Unterrichts und der besuchten Berufsschulklassen. Theoretisch verfolgen wir einen integrativen Zugang und stützen uns auf Erklärungsangebote der Motivationspsychologie (insbes. Erweitertes kognitives Motivationsmodell), der pädagogischen Psychologie (z. B. Big-Fish-Little-Pond-Effekte) und der Bildungssoziologie (Konzept des sozialen Kapitals). Empirisch überprüfen wir vermutete Person- und Kontexteffekte anhand der Befragungsdaten von 847 Auszubildenden aus 41 Berufsschulklassen in Bayern/Deutschland. Die Ergebnisse durchgeführter Mehrebenenregressionen dokumentieren geringe klassenabhängige Schwankungen bei zugleich hohen interindividuellen Variationen intrinsischer Motivation am Lernort Berufsschule. Diese lassen sich auf das Geschlecht und die Ressourcenausstattung eines/einer Auszubildenden, aber auch auf unterrichtliche Gestaltungselemente, insbesondere die berufspraktische Verwertbarkeit der Lerninhalte, zurückführen. Vermutete motivationale Konsequenzen der Klassenkomposition lassen sich hingegen nicht abbilden. Abschließend diskutieren wir didaktische Implikationen dieser Befunde, methodische Limitationen der Erhebung sowie die sich hieraus ergebenden Forschungsdesiderate.

Pension funds only quite recently have explored alternative assets, prodded by financial crises that devastated equity returns and led to low bond returns. We assess the addition of alternative assets to pension fund portfolios in terms of the total benefit derived from diversification, addition of positive skewness, and the elimination of left tails in returns. During 1994–2012, adding portfolios of hedge funds produced significantly higher total benefits than adding real estate, commodities, foreign equities, mutual funds, funds of funds, as well as some counter cyclical and non-cyclical assets. Conditioning on past total benefits improves the out-of-sample performance even further.

This paper investigates how process data like response time and click position relates to economic decisions. We use a social value orientation experiment, which can be considered as a prototypical multi-attribute decision problem. We find that in the social value orientation task more individualistic subjects have shorter response times than prosocial subjects. Individualistic subjects click more often on their own payoffs than on the others’ payoffs, and they click more often on their own payoffs than prosocial subjects. Moreover, the response time information and the click position information are complementary in explaining subjects’ preferences. These results show that response times and click positions can be used as indicators of people’s preferences.

In U.S. data 1981–2012, unsecured firm credit moves procyclically and tends to lead GDP, while secured firm credit is acyclical; similarly, shocks to unsecured firm credit explain a far larger fraction of output fluctuations than shocks to secured credit. In this article, we develop a tractable dynamic general equilibrium model in which unsecured firm credit arises from self-enforcing borrowing constraints, preventing an efficient capital allocation among heterogeneous firms. Unsecured credit rests on the value that borrowers attach to a good credit reputation which is a forward-looking variable. We argue that self-fulfilling beliefs over future credit conditions naturally generate endogenously persistent business-cycle dynamics. A dynamic complementarity between current and future borrowing limits permits uncorrelated sunspot shocks to unsecured debt to trigger persistent aggregate fluctuations in both secured and unsecured debt, factor productivity, and output. We show that these sunspot shocks are quantitatively important, accounting for around half of output volatility.

The dominant organizational form of vocational education and training in Switzerland is the dual-track system, in which trainees sign an apprenticeship contract with a training company. Notably, 10 % to 40 % of those contracts are terminated prematurely each year, depending on region and occupational category, which is an important topic of concern for politics, practice and research. Thus, premature contract terminations (PCTs) are associated with high costs for society, companies, and young people. This study of 335 companies involving cooks and painters from German-speaking Switzerland aims to investigate the relationship between training quality and PCT. Of these companies, 136 had been affected by a PCT, and 199 had not. The results indicate that training at the workplace is universally of rather high quality. In line with the previous literature, trainees evaluate quality significantly lower than trainers. Furthermore, there are considerable differences between the two occupations: cooks evaluate their training quality more positively than painters. Moreover, cluster analyses indicate that high quality training can help companies avoid PCTs.

Im Zuge der aktuellen Flüchtlingswelle ist auch die Bildungspolitik gefordert. Es werden umfassende Programme zur Beschulung von (minderjährigen) Flüchtlingen und Asylsuchenden aufgelegt, so auch in Bayern, in dem Bundesland, das nach Nordrhein-Westfalen die meisten Zugewanderten aufgenommen hat. Die großflächige Implementierung von Beschulungskonzepten in sehr kurzer Zeit stellt viele Akteure unterschiedlicher (Interessens-) Gruppen – Mitarbeitende der Regierungen, Schulleitungen, Lehrpersonen und Sozialpädagogen/-innen – vor große Herausforderungen. Ergebnisse unserer Delphi-Studie liefern hierbei Einblicke in die Wahrnehmung von Problemen und Chancen seitens der Beteiligten, welche mit der großflächigen Etablierung eines entsprechenden Beschulungskonzepts an bayerischen beruflichen Schulen verbunden sind. Die wahrgenommenen Chancen und Probleme werden vor dem Hintergrund organisationstheoretischer Überlegungen reflektiert und weisen darauf hin, dass die typischen Phasen von Schulentwicklungsprozessen in diesem Fall tendenziell parallel verlaufen. Die Unfreezing- und Sensibilisierungsphase scheint bei der dynamischen Entwicklung des Flüchtlingszustroms im letzten Jahr übergangen, die Movingphase aktuell herausfordernd, die Refreezingphase bisher nicht weit fortgeschritten und deren Ende aktuell kaum absehbar.

People benefit from being perceived as trustworthy. Examples include sellers trying to attract buyers, or candidates in elections trying to attract voters. In a laboratory experiment using exchange games, in which the trustor can choose the trustee, we study whether trustees can signal their trustworthiness by giving to charity. Our results show that donors are indeed perceived as more trustworthy and they are selected significantly more often as interaction partners. As a consequence of this sorting pattern, relative payoffs to donors and non-donors differ substantially with and without partner choice. However, we do not find donors to be significantly more trustworthy than non-donors. Our findings suggest that publicly observable generosity, such as investments in corporate social responsibility or donations to charity during a political campaign, can induce perceptions of trustworthiness and trust.

How does an artist׳s death impact on the price of her works of art? We investigate this question by analyzing a Stackelberg differential game played by an artist and a continuum of collectors. Employing the “piecewise open-loop strategy” concept, we find that the art price remains at some well-defined “pseudo-competitive” level as long as the artist is alive. When the artist unexpectedly dies, the price increases on impact. This so-called death effect varies negatively with the artist׳s age at death.

Inconsistent social behavior is a core psychopathological feature of borderline personality disorder. The goal of the present study was to examine inconsistency in social decision-making using simple economic social experiments. We investigated the decisions of 17 female patients with BPD, 24 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), and 36 healthy controls in three single shot economic experiments measuring trust, cooperation, and punishment. BPD severity was assessed using the Zanarini Rating Scale for BPD. Investments across identical one-shot trust and punishment games were significantly more inconsistent in BPD patients than in controls. Such inconsistencies were only found in the social risk conditions of the trust and punishment conditions but not in the non-social control conditions. MDD patients did not show such inconsistencies. Furthermore, social support was negatively correlated with inconsistent decision-making in the trust and punishment game, which underscores the clinical relevance of this finding.

A simple shrinkage method is proposed to improve the performance of weighting estimators of the average treatment effect. As the weights in these estimators can become arbitrarily large for the propensity scores close to the boundaries, three different variants of a shrinkage method for the propensity scores are analyzed. The results of a comprehensive Monte Carlo study demonstrate that this simple method substantially reduces the mean squared error of the estimators in finite samples, and is superior to several popular trimming approaches over a wide range of settings.

The presence of weak instruments is translated into a nearly singular problem in a control function representation. Therefore, the L₂-norm type of regularization is proposed to implement the 2SLS estimation for addressing the weak instrument problem. The L₂-norm regularization with a regularized parameter O(n) allows us to obtain the Rothenberg (1984) type of higher-order approximation of the 2SLS estimator in the weak instrument asymptotic framework. The proposed regularized parameter yields the regularized concentration parameter O(n), which is used as a standardized factor in the higher-order approximation. We also show that the proposed L₂-norm regularization consequently reduces the finite sample bias. A number of existing estimators that address finite sample bias in the presence of weak instruments, especially Fuller's limited information maximum likelihood estimator, are compared with our proposed estimator in a simple Monte Carlo exercise.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to compare stakeholders’ roles in Germany and Switzerland when it comes to promoting innovation in the dual apprenticeship model. In both countries, the relevant stakeholders who represent the various occupations and, in a more narrow sense, the social partners, actively shape vocational education and training (VET) reforms. They represent the area of public educational policy, besides governments, political parties and the public, who, in both countries, appreciate the decisive role of apprenticeships for youth education, employment and social stability. Thus, the broad consensus of the relevant stakeholders is crucial in order to keep apprenticeship systems alive. Both countries face challenges related to academisation, which means, that the Gymnasium (high school) and higher education now are even more the first option for parents than in former times. On several levels German and Swiss policy makers try to strengthen VET paying tribute to and trying to cope with these developments.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper is situated in the field of comparative VET research. Based on policy documents and findings from research the paper analyses the discourse and perspectives related to VET reforms. The authors deliberately focus on two countries, Germany and Switzerland, which share a great deal of common features in relation to VET, nevertheless developed different measures in order to cope with the pressure of increasing the ratio of students in higher education. The comparative paper looks at the topical reform discourse and taken measures and the specific culture of apprenticeships in the two countries by focusing on those stakeholders, which, besides governments, are crucially involved in the system. The paper draws its insights from the VET policy debate and from both national policy documents and national and international expert publications in the field of VET. A strong focus is given to the emerging new environment of the VET system. Methodologically, the paper draws from an institutional view on VET, which is being discussed broadly in comparative research, since VET systems with a “dual system”, such as the two discussed here, may be categorized as “state-steered market models”, “occupation-based qualifications styles”, “collective skill formation systems” or specific realizations of “transition systems”. All these categories refer to the observation that in these societies it is not the state alone, who defines the structure of the respective VET system, but non-state stakeholders are capable of influencing VET policy and VET reform in a substantial and visible way.

Findings
– In both countries, Germany and Switzerland, the importance and value of VET is based on an overall consensus, shared by all relevant actors. The basis of this consensus is that the dual system so far successfully opened and should continue to open career paths in industry. Apprenticeships undoubtedly are cornerstones of economic welfare in these countries and can be associated with low youth unemployment rates. A supplementary aspect in the last years however is the political will that VET should also have some kind of link with higher education. Despite some interesting reform measures ambivalences cannot be ignored: against what could be called “academic fallacy” the importance of a highly qualified workforce, trained in non-academic fields, and the future of this kind of skill formation have become major topics and concerns in both societies.

Originality/value
– This paper is comparing two similar cases, Switzerland and Germany, in VET in order to profile reform alternatives. Furthermore the actors beyond state are highlighted as important element for reform in VET education.

The authors present results from a comprehensive field experiment at Swiss high schools in which they compare the effectiveness of teaching methods in economics. They randomly assigned classes into an experimental and a conventional teaching group, or a control group that received no specific instruction. Both teaching treatments improve economic understanding considerably, while effect sizes between teaching treatments are almost identical. However, preexisting economic competencies crucially affect learning outcomes as more competent students seem to benefit disproportionately from classroom experiments, while weaker students lose out. Supplemental data indicate that the experimental treatment crowded out time for adequately discussing the subject, which may have limited less competent students to generate a profound understanding.

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dc.contributor.author: Ruhose, Jens