The impact of declining youth employment stability on future wages

Has the early career become less stable during the 1980s and 1990s? And does a lack of early-career employment stability inhibit wage growth? I analyze exc     

Zillmerung und Rückkaufswert – ein kritischer Blick auf die rechtliche Bewertung

This article discusses the legal and economic correlation between the Zillmer-method and the surrender values in life insurance. The aim of this paper is to present the actuarial foundation as well as the economic needs in order to analyze critically in this context the discussion about the actual legal discussion with regard to consumer protection. As a first step the Zillmer-method, its functioning and the resulting economic benefits and consequences are presented. Subsequently, the surrender value and its historical development are studied to analyze the relationship between the Zillmer-method and surrender values. It also addresses the jurisprudence of the two High Courts, BGH and BVerfG, which manifests itself in recent years increasingly critical with regard to the Zillmer-method and surrender values. The paper results in the conclusion that it should be distinguished legally between the Zillmer-method and the surrender values more consequently than before since deregulation took place in 1994. In this respect the judgments cited require a critical evaluation. In a final step it is questioned whether the minimum guaranteed surrender values according to German law might be against European law.     

Pigou in the 21st Century: a tribute on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Economics of Welfare

The year 2020 marks the centennial of the publication of Arthur Cecil Pigou’s magnum opus The Economics of Welfare. Pigou’s pricing principles have had an enduring influence on the academic debate, with a widespread consensus having emerged among economists that Pigouvian taxes or subsidies are theoretically desirable, but politically infeasible. In this article, we revisit Pigou’s contribution and argue that this consensus is somewhat spurious, particularly in two ways: (1) Economists are too quick to ignore the theoretical problems and subtleties that Pigouvian pricing still faces; (2) The wholesale skepticism concerning the political viability of Pigouvian pricing is at odds with its recent practical achievements. These two points are made by, first, outlining the theoretical and political challenges that include uncertainty about the social cost of carbon, the unclear relationship between the cost–benefit and cost-effectiveness approaches, distributional concerns, fragmented ministerial responsibilities, an unstable tax base, commitment problems, lack of acceptance and trust between government and citizens as well as incomplete international cooperation. Secondly, we discuss the recent political success of Pigouvian pricing, as evidenced by the German government’s 2019 climate policy reform and the EU’s Green Deal. We conclude by presenting a research agenda for addressing the remaining barriers that need to be overcome to make Pigouvian pricing a common political practice.

     

Transitions in the stock markets of the US,UK and Germany

In an analysis of the US, the UK and German stock market, we find a change in the behaviour based on the stocks’ beta values. In the years 1995–2006, trades of stocks with high beta and large volume were concentrated in the IT and technology sector, whereas in 2006–2012 those trades are dominated by stocks from the financial sector. We show that an agent-based model can reproduce such a transition. We further show that the initial impulse for the transition might stem from the increase of high-frequency trading at that time.