Latest Publications
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(2014): The distribution of the gains from spillovers through worker mobility between workers and firms European Economic Review. 2014, 70, pp. 17-35. ISSN 0014-2921. eISSN 1873-572X. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.03.011
Knowledge spillovers through worker mobility between firms, found in previous research, imply that knowledge production within firms creates a positive externality to the hiring firms and their workers. We calculate the shares in the gains from spillovers retained by these parties using matched employer–employee data from Danish manufacturing. We find that around two-thirds of the total output gain (0.1% per year) is netted by the firms as extra profit, about a quarter goes to the incumbent workers as extra wages, while the workers who bring spillovers receive no more than 8% of it. This gains distribution, which favors the hiring firms, is similar for different types of moving workers, and is stable over time.
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(2014): Gesundheitsfonds : Kürzung des Bundeszuschusses Wirtschaftsdienst. 2014, 94(4), pp. 237-238. ISSN 0043-6275. eISSN 1613-978X. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10273-014-1663-0
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(2014): Forest Clearing in Rural Livelihoods : Household-Level Global-Comparative Evidence World Development. 2014, 64, pp. S67-S79. ISSN 0305-750X. eISSN 1873-5991. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.03.002
This paper examines the factors that influence rural household decisions to clear forestland. We use a large dataset comprising 7172 households from 24 developing countries. Twenty-seven percent of sampled households had converted forest to agriculture during the previous 12 months, clearing on average 1.21 ha. Male-headed households with abundance of male labor, living in recently settled places with high forest cover, unsurprisingly tended to clear more, but regional peculiarities abounded. Households with medium to high asset holdings and higher market orientation were more likely to clear forest than the poorest and market-isolated households, questioning popular policy narratives about poverty-driven forest clearing.
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(2014): Affect and fairness : Dictator games under cognitive load Journal of Economic Psychology. 2014, 41, pp. 77-87. ISSN 0167-4870. eISSN 1872-7719. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.08.007
We investigate the impact of affect and deliberation on other-regarding decisions. In our laboratory experiment subjects decide on a series of mini-Dictator games while under varying degrees of cognitive load. Cognitive load is intended to decrease deliberation and therefore enhance the influence of affect on behavior. In each game subjects have two options: they can decide between a fair and an unfair allocation. We find that subjects in a high-load condition are more generous - they more often choose the fair allocation than subjects in a low-load condition. The series of mini-Dictator games also allows us to investigate how subjects react to the games’ varying levels of advantageous inequality. Low-load subjects react considerably more to the degree of advantageous inequality. Our results underscore the importance of affect for basic altruistic behavior and deliberation in adjusting decisions to a given situation.
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I develop a novel link between frictions in international financial markets and fiscal procyclicality.Complementing existing evidence, A decomposition of government expenditure into social spending and public good spending reveals that the cyclical correlation of social spending exhibits the biggest differences across countries. I build a small open economy model with income inequality, endogenous fiscal policy and sovereign default risk to rationalize this spending procyclicality. Government spending, divided into a public good and social spending, is financed by taxation and external debt. External debt is subject to endogenous risk premia because the government cannot commit to repay its debt. The government conducts a procyclical tax and social spending policy when debt is in or close to the risky zone. Social spending then only redistributes income, failing to smooth private consumption over time. Far away from the crisis zone, fiscal policy is countercyclical, only public goods spending is always procyclical. Social spending is cut most when the government faces positive risk premia, because it is better a substitute of private income than public good spending. It also accounts for the largest part in fiscal adjustment: because taxes are distortionary and cannot be targeted well. Fiscal procyclicality becomes stronger with higher economic inequality as revenue raising through taxation becomes more costly.
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(2014): Rücksendung von geringwertigen Wirtschaftsgütern BBK. 2014, 2014(18), pp. 867-869. ISSN 0340-9848
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This paper tests the feasibility and empirical implications of a spatial econometric model with a full set of interaction effects and weight matrix defined as an equally weighted group interaction matrix applied to research productivity of individuals. We also elaborate two extensions of this model, namely with group fixed effects and with heteroskedasticity. In our setting the model with a full set of interaction effects is overparameterised: only the SDM and SDEM specifications produce acceptable results. They imply comparable spillover effects, but by applying a Bayesian approach taken from LeSage (2014), we are able to show that the SDEM specification is more appropriate and thus that colleague interaction effects work through observed and unobserved exogenous characteristics common to researchers within a group.
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(2014): The impact of management incentives in intergroup contests European Economic Review. 2014, 67, pp. 42-61. ISSN 0014-2921. eISSN 1873-572X. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.01.003
In intergroup contests a manager advises and motivates her group’s members. Her rewards often depend on the subsequent contest expenditure of the members. I test whether such incentives undermine the credibility and effectiveness of a manager’s efforts. In the different experimental treatments the managers either benefit from very high or low expenditure or get a predetermined payment. The results show that different management incentives shape the expenditure of the group members even if managers have an advisory role only. However, group members follow recommendations more closely if management compensation is not linked to contest expenditures.
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(2014): Political corruption, public procurement, and budget composition : Theory and evidence from OECD countries European Journal of Political Economy. 2014, 34, pp. 372-389. ISSN 0176-2680. eISSN 1873-5703. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2014.02.005
This paper examines the relation between political corruption and the composition of public spending. A rent-seeking model is used to describe political rent creation through the composition of public spending. Political corruption is indicated by empirical results for 29 OECD countries for the period 1996–2009: allocation of public spending to expenditure categories characterized by high-technology goods supplied by non-competitive industries varies positively with the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) provided by Transparency International. Previous literature on corruption in government has focused on low-income countries. The results of this study suggest that political corruption is also an issue in OECD countries.
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(2014): Price dynamics in the Belarusian black market for foreign exchange Journal of International Economics. 2014, 94(1), pp. 169-176. ISSN 0022-1996. eISSN 1873-0353. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.06.002
Using unique data from an internet-based foreign-exchange trading platform, we show that the black market efficiently incorporated public information on the state of the Belarusian economy during the Balance of Payments crisis of 2011. Between May and October 2011, the government repeatedly devalued the Belarusian ruble and eventually abandoned its fixed exchange rate regime. Measures derived from black market transaction data have significant predictive power for these devaluations. The significance of these black market measures survives even when we include standard macroeconomic indicators in our forecasting model. In line with standard economic theory, activity in the black market has dried up subsequently.
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Do incentives and policy choices of public officials depend on whether they are appointed by an elected body or directly elected by voters? I investigate this question using the example of state grants for highly visible municipal investment projects. To attract these grants, mayors must prepare and submit applications to the state government. My identification strategy exploits a natural experiment in a German state where mayor elections were gradually introduced. The difference-in-differences estimation results show that elected mayors attract 7 to 8% more investment grants from the state tier in election years, while for appointed mayors there is no cycle. Results based on hand-collected data for individual mayors exclude alternative transmission channels such as changes in (self-)selection of mayors or partisan alignment in grant allocation.
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(2014): Investments as Signals of Outside Options Journal of Economic Theory. 2014, 150, pp. 683-708. ISSN 0022-0531. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.jet.2013.12.001
Consider a seller who can make an observable but non-contractible investment to improve an intermediate good that is specialized to a particular buyerʼs needs. The buyer then makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the seller. The seller has private information about the fraction of the ex post surplus that he can realize on his own. Compared to a situation with complete information, additional investment incentives are generated by the sellerʼs desire to pretend a strong outside option. On the other hand, ex post efficiency is not attained since asymmetric information at the bargaining stage sometimes leads to inefficient separations.
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(2014): Wirtschafts-, Mathematik- und Deutschkenntnisse Deutschschweizer Lernender am Ende des Gymnasiums und der Berufsmaturität FRANZ EBERLE ..., , ed.. Abitur und Matura zwischen Hochschulvorbereitung und Berufsorientierung. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2014, pp. 215-230. ISBN 978-3-658-06089-3. Available under: doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-06090-9_12
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dc.contributor.author: Eberle, Franz
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Der Faktormarkt für Arbeit lässt sich aufgrund fortschreitender Spezialisierungsanforderungen, räumlicher Friktionen und sozialer Interdependenzen durch perfekt kompetitive Strukturen nur unzureichend beschreiben. In Analogie zu industrieökonomischen Ansätzen sowie in Abgrenzung zu anonymisierten Kapitalmärkten liegt es für menschliche Arbeitsleistung deshalb nahe, eine Modellierungsstrategie zu verfolgen, die einen reduzierten Wettbewerb der Nachfrageseite explizit berücksichtigt. Tobias Lewerth bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über die Wirkungsweisen und den Erklärungsgehalt derartiger mono- und oligopsonistischer Modellansätze und überträgt deren partielle Methodik in den Bereich der allgemeinen Gleichgewichtstheorie. Hierdurch gelingt es dem Autor, vermachtete Faktormärkte in die Theorie des Außenhandels zu integrieren, die klassischen Handelstheoreme zu erweitern und die Wohlfahrtswirkungen einer zunehmenden Globalisierung neu zu bewerten.
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(2014): The neural basis of belief updating and rational decision making Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 2014, 9(1), pp. 55-62. ISSN 1749-5016. eISSN 1749-5024. Available under: doi: 10.1093/scan/nss099
Rational decision making under uncertainty requires forming beliefs that integrate prior and new information through Bayes’ rule. Human decision makers typically deviate from Bayesian updating by either overweighting the prior (conservatism) or overweighting new information (e.g. the representativeness heuristic). We investigated these deviations through measurements of electrocortical activity in the human brain during incentivized probability-updating tasks and found evidence of extremely early commitment to boundedly rational heuristics. Participants who overweight new information display a lower sensibility to conflict detection, captured by an event-related potential (the N2) observed around 260 ms after the presentation of new information. Conservative decision makers (who overweight prior probabilities) make up their mind before new information is presented, as indicated by the lateralized readiness potential in the brain. That is, they do not inhibit the processing of new information but rather immediately rely on the prior for making a decision.
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(2014): An argument in favor of long terms for central bankers Economics Letters. 2014, 122(2), pp. 132-135. ISSN 0165-1765. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.econlet.2013.11.010
Drawing on the canonical New Keynesian model, we assess the impact of central bankers’ term duration on governments’ appointment choices. We show that longer terms induce the government to appoint more conservative central bankers, which is socially desirable.
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(2014): Neural Correlates of Receiving an Apology and Active Forgiveness : An fMRI Study PLoS ONE. 2014, 9(2), e87654. eISSN 1932-6203. Available under: doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087654
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dc.contributor.author: Strang, Sabrina; Weber, Bernd; Falk, Armin