Currency unions and trade: how large is the treatment effect?

The impact of a common currency on trade can be grossly mismeasured if countries that belong to currency unions are systematically different from those that do not, and if the relationship between trade and its observable determinants is complex. I argue that such complications are plausible and likely to distort the empirical results of a recent Economic Policy paper by Andrew Rose (Issue 30, 2000: pp. 7–45). Using techniques designed to be robust in this situation, I find that the effects of common currency on international trade are considerably less dramatic and much less precisely estimated.
I have always maintained that the measured effect of a single currency on trade appears implausibly large, but I am not convinced by Torsten Persson's diagnosis and proposed solution. I apply a variety of estimation techniques to a new larger data set, where many more instances of currency union creation and abandonment make it possible to rely on time–series as well as cross–sectional evidence. The results are similar to my earlier ones: the effect of a single currency on trade is large.     

Pay-As-You-Drive Angebote von Erstversicherern für Privatkunden

“Pay-as-you-drive” (PAYD) concepts for car liability insurances envisage that real driving behavior and situation data are captured and processed via car sensors and tracking systems in order to calculate case-specific insurance rates which better correspond to the risk profiles of policy holders (PH) than conventional tariffs. The present article provides an outline of PAYD insurance variants, of legal arrangements with particular relevance for PAYD offerings in Germany and of the international dissemination of PAYD concepts. It shows that although PAYD offerings of direct insurers (DI) for private customers are not barred by insurmountable technical or legal barriers, they so far have little practical relevance in Germany. Against this background expected PAYD impacts on revenues and costs of DI are discussed in detail in order to analyze the extent to which DIs’ cautious PAYD offering strategies may be qualified as economically reasonable. The investigation suggests that the profitability effects of PAYD insurances of DI targeted at private customers are far from being definitely and clearly positive. Thus, it is very unlikely that DI will make significant investments on their own in order to create a large German residential market for PAYD insurances. Rather such a market will not emerge without accompanying state interventions.     

Einflussfaktoren der Adoptionsbereitschaft von standortbezogenen Mobilfunkdiensten

The present paper provides an empirical investigation exploring the extent to which various customer-related characteristics explain variance in individual intentions to adopt mobile location-sensitive pull information, navigation and transaction services. The analysis is based on a written survey of 1,097 German-speaking retail customers of mobile network operators [MNO]. Three adoption dimensions of location-based services [LBS] (use probabilities, willingness to pay, readiness to bear efforts in order to be able to use the services) were distinguishable. The values obtained for these dimensions suggest that LBS are unlikely to evolve into an important revenue generator in the German retail mobile communication market unless MNO exert strong efforts to increase mobile consumers' adoption intentions. Correlation and regression analyses indicate that MNO may achieve the most significant increases in the adoption intention dimensions captured by (1) gearing LBS offers to target groups with strong needs for “on the move information” (e.g., timetables), (2) motivating early adopters of LBS to act as peer-to-peer service promoters and (3) implementing measures to reduce consumers' data abuse and privacy concerns.     

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