Strategic Responses: A Survey Experiment on Opposition to Pension Reforms*

The responses given in opinion polls on future policy reforms reflect both subjective expectations and preferences. We disentangle these factors using data from a controlled survey experiment conducted in Germany. At the time of the experiment, an increased retirement age had been proposed as part of a pension reform. Thus, the survey respondents faced an incentive to give biased responses. By understating their expected work ability at the age of retirement, they could make the increase of the retirement age a less attractive policy option. We find evidence for such strategic response behavior, and this strategic bias appears to be stronger in former communist East Germany.     

Sabotage in Tournaments with Heterogeneous Contestants: Empirical Evidence from the Soccer Pitch

In this paper, we address the problem of sabotage in tournaments with heterogeneous contestants. In a first step, we develop a formal model, which yields the prediction that favorites exert higher productive effort, while underdogs are more tempted to engage in destructive actions (sabotage). This is because favorites have a higher return on productive effort and both types of effort are substitutes. In a second step, we use data from German professional soccer to test this prediction. In line with the model, we find that favorite teams win more tackles in a fair way, while underdog teams commit more fouls.     

A drunk and her dog: a spurious relation? Cointegration tests as instruments to detect spurious correlations between integrated time series

A significant correlation between integrated time series does not necessarily imply a meaningful relation. The relation can also be meaningless, i.e. spurious. Cointegration is sometimes illustrated by the metaphor of ‘a drunk and her dog’. The relation between integrated processes is meaningful, if they are cointegrated. To prevent spurious correlations, integrated series are usually transformed. This implies a loss of information. In case of cointegration, these transformations are no longer necessary. Moreover, it can be shown that cointegration tests are instruments to detect spurious correlations between integrated time series. This paper compares the Dickey–Fuller and the Johansen cointegration test. By means of Monte Carlo simulations, we found that these cointegration tests are a much more accurate alternative for the identification of spurious relations compared to the rather imprecise method of utilizing the R ²-and DW-statistics recommended by some authors. Furthermore, we demonstrate that cointegration techniques are precise methods of distinguishing between spurious and meaningful relations even if the dependency between the processes is very low. Using these tests, the researcher is not in danger of either neglecting a small but meaningful relation or regarding a relation as meaningful which is actually spurious.     

Exportaktivitäten: Positiv für Rendite deutscher Industrieunternehmen?

Zusammenfassung   Zahlreiche Studien belegen, dass exportierende Unternehmen eine h?here Produktivit?t aufweisen als gleich gro?e nicht exportierende Unternehmen aus derselben Branche. Gleichzeitig zahlen Exporteure ihren Mitarbeitern bei identischer Qualifikation h?here L?hne, und sie müssen Extrakosten im Zusammenhang mit den Ausfuhren tragen. Lohnt sich Exportt?tigkeit „unter dem Strich“ – oder wird der Produktivit?tsvorsprung durch die h?heren Kosten ausgeglichen? Prof. Dr. Joachim Wagner, 53, leitet die Abteilung Empirische Wirtschaftsforschung im Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Leuphana Universit?t Lüneburg. Der Beitrag entstand im Rahmen des Projekts „Exporte und Produktivit?tsdynamik in nieders?chsischen Industriebetrieben“. Ich danke dem Nieders?chsischen Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur für die finanzielle F?rderung aus dem Forschungs- und Berufungspool. Alle Berechnungen mit den vertraulichen Unternehmensdaten wurden im Forschungsdatenzentrum der Statistischen ?mter der L?nder in Berlin durchgeführt; ich danke Ramona Pohl für die Erstellung des Datensatzes, die Prüfung der umfangreichen Ergebnisausdrucke auf Geheimhaltungsfreiheit und die gewohnt reibungslose Kooperation.     

World civilisations at crossroads: Towards an expansionist or a sustainable future—Lessons from history

Like may periods of the past, the future will be characterised by resource scarcities, with limited pollution sink capacities constituting a new constraint. The strategic choices discussed in the West today resemble quite closely the strategies developed in Europe during past centuries to deal with resource scarcities: to overcome them by means of market mechanisms leading to efficiency improvements and substitution, by global trade enhancing resource availability, or by forcefully seizing foreign resources. In order to learn lessons for the future, these strategies are discussed regarding their past performance and their present applicability. They face severe limits regarding their problem solving capabilities, either because they are structurally unsuitable as a response to global economic and environmental scarcity problems, or their success is too questionable to rely on it. Consequently, another strategy is needed to adapt human economies and societies to the limits of Planet Earth. Sustainable development is such a strategy, developed in Europe in the 18th century to deal with absolute scarcities; its roots help to understand its current relevance. In a globally interconnected world it cannot be operationalised top-down, but is dependent on cooperation to become effective. Sustainability strategies cannot be designed as one-size-fits-all solutions, but are civilisation specific. This in turn requires an international institutional framework based on the subsidiarity principle (the imperative to take decisions at the lowest effective level), requiring the acceptance of political and cultural diversity of the current and future world society. It encourages different civilisation specific development objectives and trajectories, however with all actors contributing in their own ways to the achievement of agreed common goals like combating climate change, preserving biodiversity or eradicating poverty, following the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.     

International trade and firm performance: a survey of empirical studies since 2006

The literature on international trade and firm performance grows exponentially. This paper attempts to summarize what we learn from this literature to guide future empirical and theoretical work in this area. The focus is on the empirical part of the literature that consists of recently published papers using data for firms from manufacturing or services industries to study the links between international trade (exports and imports) and dimensions of firm performance (productivity, wages, profitability and survival).     

Are nascent entrepreneurs ‘Jacks-of-all-trades’? A test of Lazear's theory of entrepreneurship with German data

In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-employment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. The intuition behind this proposition is that entrepreneurs must have sufficient knowledge in a variety of areas to put together the many ingredients needed for survival and success in a business, while for paid employees it suffices and pays to be a specialist in the field demanded by the job taken. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing Lazear's hypothesis using a large recent representative sample of the German population. The empirical estimation takes the rare events nature of becoming a nascent entrepreneur and the regional stratification of the sample into account. The results illustrate the statistical significance and economic importance of the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ theory.     

Is export diversification good for profitability? First evidence for manufacturing enterprises in Germany

This article uses a tailor-made newly available data set for enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany to investigate for the first time the links between export diversification over destination countries and goods on the one hand and the profitability of the exporting firms on the other hand. We find that profits tend to be larger in firms with less diversified export sales over goods and in firms with more diversified export sales over destination countries.