Public debt and economic growth – economic systems matter

Most studies on the relationship between public debt and economic growth implicitly assume homogeneous debt effects across their samples. We –in accordance with recent literature– challenge this view and state that there likely is a great deal of cross-country heterogeneity in that relationship. However, other than scholars assuming that all countries are different, we expect that clusters of countries differ. We identify three country clusters with distinct economic systems: Liberal (Anglo Saxon), Continental (Core EU members) and Nordic (Scandinavian). We argue that different degrees of fiscal uncertainty at comparable levels of public debt between those economic systems constitute a major source of heterogeneity in the debt-growth relationship. Our empirical evidence supports this assumption. Continental countries face more growth reducing public debt effects than especially Liberal countries. There, public debt apparently exerts neutral or even positive growth effects, while for Nordic countries a non-linear relationship is discovered, with negative debt effects kicking in at public debt values of around 60% of GDP.     

Scope of improvement in water usage efficiency in manual dishwashing: A multicountry study by questionnaire survey

Over recent decades, water conservation have become increasingly an utmost important issue for debate, and this includes the domestic sector. Reducing demand water by improving the efficiency of water use in domestic sector requires an understanding of how water is used and in what ways water savings can be realized. The focus of this global, web‐based, consumer questionnaire survey was to analyze individual consumer attitudes towards using water in manual dishwashing and understand the likelihood of a prospect of changing the daily manual dishwashing method resulting to a more efficient domestic usage of water. This study was designed to investigate the manual dishwashing technique used in the 5249 households of nine different countries ‐ China, Germany, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, India, South Africa and Argentina. Besides socio‐demographics, technical questions like cleaning steps, hygiene questions motivational question, environmental awareness questions, questions on payment for water and electricity, questions on information sources about household work were included in the study. It was found that the awareness to conserve water was common among the Asian participants but it necessarily was not practiced in the households as individual washing of dishes was found to be quite high. Among the many outcomes, important one was that ‘running tap method’ was found to be most prevalent (86%) among Russian participants, complimenting their detached approach towards conserving domestic water usage. In South American countries like Brazil (66%) and Argentina (51%), high occurrence of ‘running tap rinse’ was found to be a common practice, confirming the lack of conscious use of water in manual dishwashing in the subcontinent. Based on the overall responses, awareness of a new and efficient technique of manual dishwashing could be propagated through the most voted mediums of Internet (81%) and TV (69%).     

A Novel Sampling Strategy for Surveying High Net-Worth Individuals—A Pretest Application Using the Socio-Economic Panel

High-wealth individuals are typically underrepresented or completely missing in population surveys. The lack of comprehensive national registers on high-wealth individuals in many countries challenged previous attempts to remedy this under-representation. In a novel research design, we draw on public data on the shareholding structures of companies as a sampling frame. Our design builds on the empirical regularity that high-wealth individuals are likely to hold at least part of their assets in the form of shareholdings. Based on data from over 270 million companies worldwide, we select all individuals who are both German residents and registered shareholders of companies. In a pretest, we interviewed 124 households from a gross sample of 2,000 anchor persons. Our analysis shows that values of shareholdings from register data highly correlate with individual ranks in the wealth distribution, that the quality of personal information, particularly the residential address, is sufficiently high for subsequent interviewing, and that the approach can fill a major data and research gap in the study of high-wealth individuals.     

Upward classism: Prejudice and stereotyping against the wealthy

While there are many studies of prejudice towards disadvantaged minorities, there has been little research into stereotypes of rich people. The author commissioned the first international comparative study to investigate popular attitudes towards rich people. He analyses findings from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France, and calculates a ‘Social Envy Coefficient’ for these four countries. Envy appears most pronounced in France, followed by Germany. By contrast, envy is significantly lower in the United States and Great Britain, although there are interesting variations by age. In addition, the study subjects a sample of popular international feature films and articles in German newspapers to detailed media content analysis. This analysis finds that rich individuals are predominantly portrayed as cold-hearted, profit-hungry and morally suspect.     

Exchange rate predictability and dynamic Bayesian learning

We consider how an investor in the foreign exchange market can exploit predictive information by means of flexible Bayesian inference. Using a variety of vector autoregressive models, the investor is able, each period, to learn about important data features. The developed methodology synthesizes a wide array of established approaches for modeling exchange rate dynamics. In a thorough investigation of monthly exchange rate predictability for 10 countries, we find that using the proposed methodology for dynamic asset allocation achieves substantial economic gains out of sample. In particular, we find evidence for sparsity, fast model switching, and exploitation of the exchange rate cross-section.     

Attempt to test impact values for multi-indicator systems—exemplified by gender equality

Hasse diagram technique, based on partial ordering is an advantageous method to analyse complex systems of data such as objects characterized by multi-indicator systems. Beside ordered sequences of objects the theory may reveal the impact of each indicator for the set of order relations, which in general is of high interest. A method to measure the impact has already been known for more than 20 years; however, up to now there is no method for a testing as to how far these impacts are considered to be relevant. The actual study presents a first attempt for a testing theory, albeit an extension to statistical testing framework is still open. The testing approach so far is applied to the indicators of gender-equality. It turns out that for the 28 nations (pre-Brexit) of the EU, 2006, in addition to the unified European Union only one indicator can definitely be declared as relevant.

     

Global consumer study to identify water wastage in the usage of automatic dishwashers

In dishcleaning automatic dishwashers do clearly win over manual cleaning when it comes to efficiency: Resources can be saved without compromising on hygiene. But mistakes in the usage behaviour can equalize saving advantages. Consumers in nine countries, covering different regions of the world, were asked about their dishcleaning behaviour to identify if this household work is done in a resource saving way. By analysing mistakes in the current behaviour, the potential of water savings shall be estimated.