Eine gerechte und aufkommensneutrale Grundsteuerreform?

Wirtschaftsdienst - Nach einer fast 20-jährigen Vorgeschichte hat sich das Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG) mit der Bemessungsgrundlage der Grundsteuer beschäftigt. Dabei geht es um die...     

Evaluating irrigation investments in Malawi: economy‐wide impacts under uncertainty and labor constraints

Irrigation expansion is critical to increase crop yields and mitigate effects from climate change in Sub‐Saharan Africa, but the low profitability has led to little irrigation investments in the region so far. Using an integrated modeling framework, we simultaneously evaluate the returns to irrigation arising from both economic and biophysical impact channels to understand what determines the profitability of irrigation in Malawi. Our results confirm that the returns to irrigation cannot cover the costs in Malawi. While labor‐intensive irrigation expansion leads to unfavorable structural change in the short‐run, the profitability hinges on low irrigated yields that fall far from expectations due to insufficient input use and crop management techniques. On the other hand, we find that the nonmonetary benefits of irrigation regarding higher food security, lower poverty, and reduced vulnerability to climate change make investments in irrigation worthwhile to improve the livelihoods of smallholders.     

Das Hamburger Beihilfemodell – Ein Vergleich der internen Renditen von GKV und PKV

At the beginning of their career civil servants in Germany can choose between the social health insurance system and a private plan combined with a direct reimbursement of the government up to 80%. Most civil servants chose the latter, also because they have to cover all contribution payments to the social system themselves, while normal employees get nearly 50% from their employers. The state of Hamburg decided to change the system by paying a share of the contributions if civil servants choose the social plan. Using a comparison of internal rates of return in both schemes, we show that this celebrated reform will not change the decision calculus for the average civil servant household and will probably thereby increase the adverse selection of high risk cases towards the social health insurance.     

Politicizing consumer credit

Powerful politicians can interfere with the enforcement of regulations. As such, expected political interference can affect constituents’ behavior. Using rotations of Senate committee chairs to identify variation in political power and expected regulatory relief, we study powerful politicians’ effect on consumer lending to communities protected by fair-lending regulations. We find a 7.5% reduction in credit access to minority neighborhoods in states with new committee chairs. Larger reductions occur in Community Reinvestment Act-eligible neighborhoods and when Senators serve on committees that oversee the enforcement of fair-lending laws. Banks headquartered in powerful Senators’ states are responsible for the reduction in credit access.     

Macroeconomic determinants of remittances: evidence from Romania

Given the globalization of the labour market and the promotion of free movement for work, young people are looking for employment opportunities from at least two perspectives – professional careers and socio-economic benefits from employment. In developing countries, such as Romania, the labour market is less attractive, which has led to profound, numerical and structural imbalances, due to external mobility for work. Both new generations of graduates and young people aged up to 40 years, decide to work abroad as a more beneficial individual solution, i.e. remittances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the macroeconomic determinants of remittances to Romania, in order to substantiate public policies on diaspora, to adjust employment policy on the national labour market by promoting incentives to create decent, youth-friendly jobs. Using panel data model we selected several variables with potential influence on remittances level. The results demonstrate that traditional influence’s factors as distance, migration routes diaspora concentration or unemployment rate are, at present, less important than wage gap or tax rate at least for developing origin countries.     

Managerial succession and organizational performance—evidence from the German Soccer League

It has been widely studied how organizational performance changes after the replacement of managers. However, there is little evidence whether environmental changes moderate the efficiency of management replacements. In this paper, I explicitly consider the effect of a change in the environment of organizations on post‐replacement effects. Analyzing the performance effect of coach replacements in the German Soccer League before and after the introduction of the 3‐points‐rule theoretically and empirically I find that the magnitude of the performance effect of coach replacements differs under alternative regimes. The empirical analysis confirms predictions from my theoretical model and identifies moderating effects. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nationale Geldsch?pfung zersetzt den Euroraum

The Eurosystem has been operating in crisis mode for more than four years now. Massive quantitative and qualitative easing in its monetary policy stance are the visible marks of its response to the turbulence in the financial sector. This policy aims primarily at maintaining financial stability in the euro area by providing vast liquidity support to commercial banks that are operating in nationally segmented banking systems. The sovereign debt crises in some member countries further exacerbate the segmentation problem along country borders. As a side effect, cross-border capital flows are substituted by money market operations by the national central banks. The latter are engaging more and more often in substantial balance-of-payments financing, and financial risks are shifted from investors to European taxpayers via the Eurosystem. Symptomatically, this shows up in exploding TARGET2 positions in the national central banks’ balance sheets. The longer this process continues, the stronger the centrifugal forces become that ultimately might burst the single currency. A solution requires a euro area-wide regulatory approach for the financial sector. Next to a uniform scheme for banking regulation, supervision and resolution, we recommend the comprehensive introduction of contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) as a major refinancing source for the banking industry. As this proposal cannot be introduced overnight, national and European banking resolution funds are necessary in the short run. The latter do not rescue banks, but they kick in as soon as a bank’s equity is depleted in order to wind down failing banks in a systemically prudent way.     

Global Navigation Satellite System based tolling: state-of-the-art

Road pricing or road user charging may be understood as an economic concept regarding direct charges applied for using roads. Different pricing paradigms may be distinguished mainly refering to pricing of congested, non-expandable urban networks as well as pricing of expandable, uncongested (principally, interurban) road infrastructure. Numerous technologies within Intelligent Transport Systems can provide support in efficiently applying various charging mechanisms. Recently, among others, tolling systems have been deployed that rely on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the state-of-the-art of using GNSS technology in road user charging.     

Consumer policy and consumer empowerment: comparing the historic development in Finland and Germany

This article traces the trajectories of consumer policy in Finland and Germany in the light of a comparative history in order to reflect upon the notion of consumer empowerment in public policy. The principle developments of contemporary consumer policy can be traced back to the post‐war political and economic integrations arising from the initial idea of free markets and individual freedom emphasized in classical liberalism. The article explores this development in Finland and Germany to the point of the establishment of a joint European Union (EU) consumer policy to reveal the notion of consumer empowerment. This approach creates an understanding of the peculiarities of consumer policy in EU member states despite the presence of a joint European policy area. Nowadays, both Finnish and German consumers find EU regulations excessive. It is important to acknowledge the influence of this historic development in order to understand what consumer empowerment meant in the past and thus to further develop policy action on a joint level.