Publikationen

Recent studies conclude that teachers are important for student learning but it remains uncertain what actually determines effective teaching. This study directly peers into the black box of educational production by investigating the relationship between lecture style teaching and student achievement. Based on matched student–teacher data for the US, the estimation strategy exploits between-subject variation to control for unobserved student traits. Results indicate that traditional lecture style teaching is associated with significantly higher student achievement. No support for detrimental effects of lecture style teaching can be found even when evaluating possible selection biases due to unobservable teacher characteristics.

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird der Einfluss verschiedener Determinanten auf die Weiterbildungsbeteiligung mit Hilfe von Daten des Sozio-Ökonomischen Panels (SOEP) zu fünf Zeitpunkten ökonometrisch geschätzt. Es zeigt sich, dass vor allem Bildung und Migrationsstatus die Teilnahme an beruflichen Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen beeinflussen. Dieser Effekt ist über alle Untersuchungszeitpunkte hinweg zu finden. Die Befunde sprechen für die Persistenz einer Chancenungleichheit im (Berufs-)Bildungssystem. Es gelingt in der beruflichen Weiterbildung nicht, Chancenungleichheiten entgegenzuwirken. Ansatzpunkte zur Behebung der Benachteiligungen werden diskutiert.

This paper analyzes how the forfeiture of illegal gains impacts the deterrence of illegal acts. We show that when public authorities introduce a claim on illegal gains as part of a sanction it may, counter-intuitively, increase crime in a setting in which criminals may invest in avoidance activities to lower the probability of detection.

In this paper, we experimentally approach the question of which aspects of a voting procedure are able to restrict elected candidates’ willingness to use their power in an opportunistic way. For this purpose, we rule out re-election concerns and analyze whether the presence of a vote by itself matters for the exercise of power. We compare two kinds of electoral campaigns: self-descriptions of personality and promises regarding prospective in-office behavior. We find that social approval as conveyed by a vote does not suffice to induce pro-social choices by elected candidates. On the other hand, when campaigns are promise-based, elected candidates transfer more to their recipients than candidates selected by a random draw even though promises do not differ. This refutes explanations based on a taste for consistency or costs of lying. In contrast, the fact that the correlation between dictators’ promises and their beliefs on voter expectations is considerably strengthened in the presence of a vote offers support to a guilt-aversion hypothesis. However, this support is qualified by the correlation between dictators’ second-order beliefs and their choices, which is weaker than predicted. Overall, our results suggest the power of voting to limit the self-oriented exertion of power is limited and context specific.

Germany’s apprenticeship system is and has always been considered to be the major sub-system of VET. In this context, the debate circling around the European and German Qualifications Framework (EQF and DQR) has become one of the central issues of VET research and policy. Tasks take on a concrete shape if (a) a serious approach is adopted towards the ideas underlying the European Qualifications Framework; and (b) if consideration is given to the ‘construction sites’ typical for the German VET system as a whole. This paper intends to sharpen VET policy awareness for the problem of dealing with those unresolved German VET issues within the context of the development of the DQR. A comparative view includes Austria and France as two countries with diverging learning cultures in VET from the German case, but obviously with more ‘European’ imprints within their respective VET systems. It can be shown that there is an interrelation between the attention apprenticeships as such receive against the background of European ideas such as ‘progression’, ‘permeability’ and ‘lifelong learning’ (LLL), including the implementation and use of ‘hybrid qualifications’.

This paper shows that it is profitable for a firm to hire an overoptimistic manager to commit to a certain investment strategy in an R&D tournament situation. In the unique symmetric equilibrium, all firms delegate to overoptimistic managers, where the optimal degree of overoptimism depends on the riskiness of the tournament. In these situations a manager's type may serve as a substitute for delegation via contracts. By delegating to overoptimistic managers, firms can escape the rat race nature of R&D tournaments.

We propose a signalling model in which the central bank and firms receive information on cost-push shocks independently of each other. If the firms are rather unlikely to receive information directly, the central bank should remain silent about its own private information. If, however, firms are sufficiently likely to be informed, it is socially desirable for the central bank to reveal its own private information. By doing so, the central bank eliminates the distortions stemming from the signalling incentives under opacity. An ex ante transparency requirement can improve welfare even if central banks have the possibility to withhold information discretionarily. Moreover, our model may provide a rationale for the recent trend towards more transparency in monetary policy.

We analyze how an artist's death influences the market prices of her works of art. Death has two opposing effects on art prices. By irrevocably restricting the artist's oeuvre, prices, ceteris paribus, increase when the artist dies. On the other hand, an untimely death may well frustrate the collectors' hopes of owning artwork that will, as the artist's career progresses, become generally known and appreciated. By frustrating expected future name recognition, death impacts negatively on art prices. In conjunction, these two channels of influence give rise to a hump-shaped relationship between age at death and death-induced price changes. Using transactions from fine art auctions, we show that the empirically identified death effects indeed conform to our theoretical predictions. We derive our results from hedonic art price regressions, making use of a dataset which exceeds the sample size of traditional studies in cultural economics by an order of magnitude.

Using vector autoregressions on U.S. time series relative to an aggregate of industrialized countries, this paper provides new evidence on the dynamic effects of government spending and technology shocks on the real exchange rate and the terms of trade. To achieve identification, we derive robust restrictions on the sign of several impulse responses from a two-country general equilibrium model. We find that both the real exchange rate and the terms of trade—whose responses are left unrestricted—depreciate in response to expansionary government spending shocks and appreciate in response to positive technology shocks.

dc.title:

dc.contributor.author: Feld, Lars P.; Reil, Lisa