Publications

Most social-preference models have been tailored to yield only a full-defection equilibrium in one- shot linear public-good situations. This paper determines the Nash-equilibrium sets that result from experiment participants’ elicited preferences. The data show that multiple equilibria are relatively frequent even in a standard three-player setting. In this perspective, the common finding of close-to- omnilateral defection at the end of repeated public-good games is surprising and raises the question of why the dynamics of play seem to select this equilibrium out of the existing equilibria.

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We investigate whether automatic selling devices causally reduce investors’ disposition effect (DE) in a laboratory experiment. Investors can actively buy and sell assets. Investors in the treatment group use stop-loss and take-gain options to automatically sell assets. In addition, we introduce a reminder condition that reminds investors about their selling plan if a limit is hit. Results show that the automatic selling device treatment significantly reduces the DEs, but the reminder treatment does not. Thus, the opportunity to ex ante commit to automatically selling at a loss causally reduces the disposition effect.

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dc.contributor.author: Romanova, Anna

This paper develops a stochastic dynamic politico-economic model of sovereign debt to analyze the interaction of sovereign default risk and political turnover. Two parties differ in their preferred size of unproductive public spending which is financed by taxes and external debt. Electoral outcomes are characterized by the economic benefits from the incumbent's policies and stochastic idiosyncratic ideological aspects. Quantitative findings suggest that endogenous political turnover increases the discrepancies between the optimal borrowing and default policies of the two parties. Prior to a debt crisis, the incumbent government accumulates external debt to foster the probability of remaining in power. The dynamic interaction of electoral outcomes, external debt, and sovereign default supports arguments for imposing institutional constraints on incumbent governments.

We analyze different committee designs in a model with the endogenous participation of experts who have private information about their own abilities. Each committee design involves a test of abilities whose accuracy influences experts' decisions to participate. We derive the following findings. First, higher wages continuously lower the quality of experts on the committee. Second, and as a consequence of this, optimal committees involve low wages. Third, an increase in transparency improves the quality of experts on the committee. Fourth, larger committees attract less able experts than smaller ones, unless the committee operates under full transparency.

We study the impact of the different tax treatment of capital gains and losses on the optimal location of assets in taxable and tax-deferred accounts. The classical result of Black (1980) and Tepper (1981) suggests that investors should follow a strict pecking order asset location rule and hold those assets that are subject to the highest tax rate preferentially in tax-deferred accounts. We show that with the different tax treatment of realized gains and losses, only tax-efficient equity mutual funds are optimally held in taxable accounts, whereas mutual funds with average tax-(in)efficiency are preferentially held in tax-deferred accounts.

Does universal preschool constitute an effective policy tool to promote the development and integration of children from minority groups? We address this question for the children of the Roma—the largest and most disadvantaged minority group in Europe. To tackle the issue of non-random selection into preschool, we exploit variation in the individual distance to the nearest preschool facility. Non-parametric instrumental variable estimations reveal significant short-term gains in terms of children's literacy. Preschool attendance also increases the prevalence of vaccinations but has no effect on other observed health outcomes. Overall, preschool also does not seem to enhance integration measured by children's language proficiency or social–emotional development, at least not in the short term.

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The central vs. local nature of high-school exit exam systems can have important repercussions on the labor market. By increasing the informational content of grades, central exams may improve the sorting of students by productivity. To test this, we exploit the unique German setting where students from states with and without central exams work on the same labor market. Our difference-in-difference model estimates whether the earnings difference between individuals with high and low grades differs between central and local exams. We find that the earnings premium for a one standard-deviation increase in high-school grades is indeed 6% when obtained on central exams but less than 2% when obtained on local exams. Choices of higher-education programs and of occupations do not appear major channels of this result.

International data from the PIAAC survey allow estimation of comparable labor-market returns to skills for 32 countries. Returns to skills are larger in faster growing economies, consistent with the hypothesis that skills are particularly important for adaptation to economic change.

Lehrpersonen wie auch Lehramtsanwärterinnen und Lehramtsanwärter sind in ihrem beruflichen Alltag zahlreichen Belastungen, insbesondere im psychosozialen Bereich, ausgesetzt, welche mittel- und langfristig gesundheitsbeeinträchtigende Wirkungen entfalten können. Betrachtet man den Umgang mit dem Thema „Gesundheitsförderung am Arbeitsplatz Schule“, so drängt sich der Eindruck auf, dass derzeit vor allem ein Fokus auf möglichen Risiko- und Belastungsfaktoren dominiert und immer wieder die Frage diskutiert wird, ob nicht bereits vor dem Referendariat eine „angemessene“ (Selbst-)Selektion erreicht werden könnte. Dagegen finden die Förderung von gesundheitserhaltenden Maßnahmen der Selbstfürsorge während der Berufsausübung sowie die Erforschung von deren Effekten wesentlich weniger Beachtung. In diesem Zusammenhang gibt es jedoch zahlreiche Hinweise darauf, dass insbesondere achtsamkeitsbasierte Verfahren eine gesundheitsförderliche, stressreduzierende und stabilisierende Wirkung entfalten können. Vor diesem Hintergrund setzt sich der vorliegende Beitrag das Ziel, ausgewählte Studien zur Wirksamkeit achtsamkeitsbasierter Stressbewältigungsinterventionen bei Lehrpersonen vorzustellen und deren zentrale Ergebnisse zusammenfassend darzustellen.