Ist das österreichische Rentensystem nachhaltig?

Wirtschaftsdienst - In der deutschen Debatte zur Rentenpolitik wird in letzter Zeit immer wieder auf das Beispiel Österreich verwiesen. Das hohe österreichische Leistungsniveau provoziert...     

Brand Equity, Consumer Learning and Choice

The aim of this paper is to explore the links between brand equity, consumer learning and consumer choice processes in general and considering two recent trends in the market place: store brands and the Internet. We first review the advances that have occurred in brand equity research in marketing in the past decade, with particular emphasis on integrating the separate streams of research emanating from cognitive psychology and information economics. Brand equity has generally been defined as the incremental utility with which a brand endows a product, compared to its non-branded counterpart. We amplify this definition: we propose that brand equity be the incremental effect of the brand on all aspects of the consumer's evaluation and choice process. We propose an agenda of research based on this amplified definition.     

External and internal influences on R&D alliance formation: Evidence from German SMEs

Relying on relational capital theory and transaction cost economics (TCE), this study identifies factors that impede or promote alliance formation in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Environmental uncertainty and knowledge intensity impede firms' R&D alliance formation; the focal firm's overall trust in partners enhances alliance formation. Trust interacts positively with environmental uncertainty and knowledge intensity to affect alliance formation in SMEs. The findings reflect data from a longitudinal sample of 854 German SMEs, captured over eight years from 1999 to 2007.     

The skill balancing act: when does broad expertise pay off?

We compare skill sets of employees working in businesses of different size to the skill sets of entrepreneurs. Employees in large businesses tend to have a lower skill balance than those working in small businesses; yet, the skill balance of entrepreneurs remains the largest. Our evidence suggests that the skill level and skill scope matter for balance and increase with formal education levels but decrease with the number of previous occupations. We find a positive relationship between skill balance and income that is strongest for entrepreneurs. For employees, the relationship remains positive but the magnitude of the association decreases when business size increases.     

Growth‐Friendly Tax Structures: An Indicator‐Based Approach

This paper designs a horizontal indicator‐based assessment methodology aimed at identifying those EU countries presenting a potential need and scope for shifting taxation away from labour to other tax bases less detrimental to growth. The assessment methodology, as a first step, selects a set of indicators measuring specific aspects of tax policy. Subsequently, for each individual indicator, performance thresholds are calculated based on a benchmarking approach. Finally, a screening algorithm based on commonly accepted findings from the relevant economic literature is used to assess the overall performance of a country in two policy areas, namely the need for a tax shift and the scope for it. Various robustness checks are performed.     

Disparitäten in der Entwicklung der Gemeindesteuern

Generally, taxes are the most relevant source of revenue for German municipalities. In the period from 2004 to 2014, tax revenues were growing at remarkable rates. However, statistical analyses show that not all municipalities were benefitting in the same way, and thus state-wide averages are of limited value, since they tend to whitewash inner-state inequality. Disparities are even significant in states with strong economic fundamentals. According to absolute measures, disparities are growing at the national level. This can be explained by a few tax-strong outliers. In contrast, relative inequality remains static. The alarming finding is that intertemporal mobility among municipalities in the allocation of tax revenues is limited, and thus tax-weak municipalities face a cloudy outlook.     

General Bayesian time-varying parameter vector autoregressions for modeling government bond yields

US yield curve dynamics are subject to time-variation, but there is ambiguity about its precise form. This paper develops a vector autoregressive (VAR) model with time-varying parameters and stochastic volatility, which treats the nature of parameter dynamics as unknown. Coefficients can evolve according to a random walk, a Markov switching process, observed predictors, or depend on a mixture of these. To decide which form is supported by the data and to carry out model selection, we adopt Bayesian shrinkage priors. Our framework is applied to model the US yield curve. We show that the model forecasts well, and focus on selected in-sample features to analyze determinants of structural breaks in US yield curve dynamics.     

TAIL FORECASTING WITH MULTIVARIATE BAYESIAN ADDITIVE REGRESSION TREES

We develop multivariate time-series models using Bayesian additive regression trees that posit nonlinearities among macroeconomic variables, their lags, and possibly their lagged errors. The error variances can be stable, feature stochastic volatility, or follow a nonparametric specification. We evaluate density and tail forecast performance for a set of U.S. macroeconomic and financial indicators. Our results suggest that the proposed models improve forecast accuracy both overall and in the tails. Another finding is that when allowing for nonlinearities in the conditional mean, heteroskedasticity becomes less important. A scenario analysis reveals nonlinear relations between predictive distributions and financial conditions.     

Understanding economic openness: a review of existing measures

Review of World Economics - This paper surveys measures of economic openness, the latter being understood as the degree to which non-domestic actors can or do participate in a domestic economy....