Evidence For Germany Research Articles

Legal Corporate Insider Trading and the Price Impact of Private Information: Evidence for Germany

This study examines the information value of corporate insider trading disclosures for a sample of 490 German companies. Our results indicate that insiders selling stocks in their own company reveal negative information about the in- trinsic firm value. This is especially the case for large volume sale transactions. In addition, stock prices of smaller com- panies react stronger to insider transactions. Furthermore, insiders tend to time their transactions, selling shares after stock price increases and buying shares after stock price decreases.

The Predictive Power of Interest Rate Volatility on Economic Sentiment: Evidence for Germany and the U.K.

In this paper we examine the explanatory and predictive power of interest rate volatility on the economic agent expectations measured by the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI), which is elaborated by the European Commission as a leading indicator of business cycle. In particular, we use implicit volatilities from the UK and German cap markets as explanatory variables, together with the yield spread and the short rate, obtaining that it is possible to explain nearly an overwhelming 70% of the variability of the ESI in contrast with historical or conditional volatility estimates which can hardly add any additional explanatory power.

Debt policy in euro area countries: Evidence for Germany and Italy using penalized spline smoothing

In this paper we test how the primary surplus in two countries of the euro area, Germany and Italy, reacts to changes of public debt. Our theoretical part demonstrates that a positive reaction on average gives strong evidence for a sustainable debt policy. In the empirical part, we perform semi-parametric estimations using penalized spline smoothing. The results suggest that there is evidence for sustainable debt policy in Germany, however, with a declining tendency. Italian public debt does not seem to be sustainable although consolidation efforts in the nineties have stabilized Italian debt. However, the conclusion as regards Italy must be made with caution because the statistical significance is small.

Industry churning and the evolution of cities: Evidence for Germany

In this paper we show that the recent model by Gilles Duranton [Duranton, G., 2007. Urban evolutions: The fast, the slow, and the still. American Economic Review 97, 197–221] performs remarkably well in replicating the city size distribution of West Germany, much better than the simple rank-size rule known as Zipf's law. The main mechanism of this theoretical framework is the “churning” of industries across cities. Little is known in urban economics about the determinants of local industry turnover so far. We present an empirical analysis of the excess churning index for West German cities, which describes the strength of intra-city industry reallocations over time. We find that urban growth and industry turnover are not notably correlated: Some, but not all fast-growing cities have notably changed. Secondly, human capital is positively related to growth and turnover, but only among successful cities. Industrial change within unsuccessful cities is driven by the disappearance of old-fashioned and declining sectors such as agriculture or mining. On a more general level our results suggest that the recent model by Duranton is a powerful description of the urban growth process. Still there are some aspects that are not captured by that model, which are at the core of other theories of urban growth.

The Impact of Child and Maternal Health Indicators on Female Labor Force Participation after Childbirth - Evidence for Germany

This paper analyzes the influence of children's health and mothers' physical and mental wellbeing on female labor force participation after childbirth in Germany. Our analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, which enables us to measure children's health based on the occurrence of severe health problems including mental and physical disabilities, hospitalizations, and preterm births. Since child health is measured at a very young age, we can rule out any of the reverse effects of maternal employment on child health identified in US studies. Within a two-year time period, we investigate the influence of these indicators on various aspects of female labor force participation after childbirth, including continuous labor force participation in the year of childbirth and the transition to employment in the year following childbirth. Since the majority of women in Germany do not go back to work within a year after childbirth, we also investigate their intention to return to work, and the preferred number of working hours. We find that the child's severe health problems have a significant negative effect on the mothers' labor force participation and a significant positive effect on her preferred number of working hours, but that hospitalizations or preterm births have no significant effect. For the mothers' own health, we find a significant negative effect of poor mental and physical wellbeing on female labor force participation within a year of childbirth. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study of this kind on data outside the US.

Relationship Banking and Financing Costs - Empirical Evidence for Germany

This study analyzes the determinants of relationship banking in Germany and their impact on the firms' borrowing costs. The analysis is based on unique micro data comprising firms' balance sheet data and their lending relationships with banks. We find that the number of lending relationships decreases with the firms' size and their R&D-intensity. Moreover, we find that borrowing costs increase with the number of lending relationships, but that the advantage of concentrating the borrowing on one bank vanishes if the relationship lasts for a longer time.

Industry Churning and the Evolution of Cities: Evidence for Germany

Industry Churning and the Evolution of Cities: Evidence for Germany

Institutional Effects on the IT Outsourcing Market: Analysing Clients, Suppliers and Staff Transfer in Germany and the UK

Drawing on empirical evidence in Germany and the UK, this article examines the institutional effects on a fast-growing area of knowledge-intensive business services — IT outsourcing. This is an important area for research since the IT outsourcing market provides many organizations with an important specialized production input and is characterized by complex inter-organizational relations. By exploring institutional influences in the context of IT outsourcing, the research extends earlier studies on how client–supplier relations shape markets for business services. It also contributes to varieties of capitalism debates by highlighting heterogeneous institutional effects within countries and common systemic trends (involving powerful multinational IT firms) in the development of the market for IT outsourcing. Comparative analysis of 13 IT outsourcing contracts in Germany and the UK, focusing on the organizational practices of client organizations and IT firms, illuminated institutional effects within the organizational setting. Analysis of industrylevel data shows that the diverse institutional contexts of Germany and the UK provided an equally favourable basis for growth in the IT outsourcing market, despite its apparent deregulatory bias. But significant institutional effects were observed, specifically related to: the role of deliberative institutions (especially works councils); and institutions governing technical standards and contracting rules. Strong deliberative institutions in Germany facilitated market growth since transactions involved distributive dilemmas, particularly related to staff transfer. Also, while institutions shaped technical and contractual expertise of client managers, they were not deterministic. Instead, they interacted with characteristics of the IT outsourcing market, namely: heterogeneous client practices to improve absorptive capacity; public vs. private contracting experience; and power relations between client and IT firm in their use of market discipline.

Macroeconomic Fluctuations and Bank Lending: Evidence for Germany and the Euro Area

This paper analyzes how bank lending to the private nonbank sector responds dynamically to aggregate supply, demand and monetary policy shocks in Germany and the euro area. The results suggest that the dynamic responses in the two areas are broadly similar, although there are some differences in the relative contribution of the three shocks to the development of output, prices, interest rates and bank loans over time. In order to assess the role of bank lending in the transmission of macroeconomic shocks, we perform counterfactual simulations and analyze the dynamic responses of German loan sub-aggregates in order to test the distributional implications of potential credit market frictions. The results suggest that there is no evidence that loans amplify the transmission of macroeconomic fluctuations or that a financial accelerator via bank lending exists.

Who Invests in Training if Contracts are Temporary? Evidence for Germany Using Selection Correction

The effects of fixed-term contracts on participation and financing of work-related training are analysed with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). In contrast to previous literature, we especially distinguish between employer- and employee-sponsored training to allow for diverging investment patterns of worker and firm. In order to control for the selection bias arising from different characteristics of individuals with fixed-term and permanent contracts, a bivariate probit model is applied. The main findings are (i) that temporary workers are faced by lower investments, and (ii) that there are no differences with respect to employer- and employee-sponsored training.

Macroeconomic Fluctuations and Bank Lending: Evidence for Germany and the Euro Area

This paper analyzes how bank lending to the private nonbank sector responds dynamically to aggregate supply, demand and monetary policy shocks in Germany and the euro area. The results suggest that the dynamic responses in the two areas are broadly similar, although there are some differences in the relative contribution of the three shocks to the development of output, prices, interest rates and bank loans over time. In order to assess the role of bank lending in the transmission of macroeconomic shocks, we perform counterfactual simulations and analyze the dynamic responses of German loan sub-aggregates in order to test the distributional implications of potential credit market frictions. The results suggest that there is no evidence that loans amplify the transmission of macroeconomic fluctuations or that a bank lending channel exists.

The effects of IAS/IFRS - Adoption on the Cost of Debt Capital - Empirical Evidence for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

The effects of IAS/IFRS - Adoption on the Cost of Debt Capital - Empirical Evidence for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

Technology Use, Organisational Flexibility and Innovation: Evidence for Germany

This paper investigates to what extent the usage of information and communication technology (ICT) fosters innovation activities by facilitating more flexible organisational structures in firms. We distinguish between functional flexibility (the ability of workers to co-operate and take decentralised decisions) and numerical flexibility (the reduction of fixed costs, mainly due to outsourcing business processes). Our results from a large and representative data set of firms in Germany show that ICT use is associated with an increase in both types of flexibility but the implications for innovation activities differ. Functional flexibility is strongly positively associated with product innovations. In contrast, numerical flexibility allows firms to 'buy' innovations in the short run, but reduces innovative capacity in the longer run.

Banks' Regulatory Capital Buffer and the Business Cycle: Evidence for Germany

This paper analyzes the effect of the business cycle on the regulatory capital buffer of German local banks in the period 1993-2004. The capital buffer is found to fluctuate countercyclically over the business cycle. The fluctuation is stronger for public banks than for cooperative banks. Further, low-capitalized banks do not catch up with their well-capitalized peers over the observation period. Finally, low-capitalized banks do not decrease risk-weighted assets in a business cycle downturn. This finding suggests that their low capitalization does not force them to retreat from lending.

Childhood Family Structure and Schooling Outcomes: Evidence for Germany

We analyze the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a family headed by a single mother. Growing up in a non-intact family in Germany is associated with worse outcomes in models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and educational performance. But once endogeneity is accounted for, whether by using sibling-difference estimators or two types of instrumental variable estimator, the evidence that family structure affects schooling outcomes is much less conclusive. Although almost all the point estimates indicate that non-intactness has an adverse effect on schooling outcomes, confidence intervals are large and span zero.

Norm-Based Trade Union Membership: Evidence for Germany

AbstractIn the absence of closed shops and discriminatory wage policies, union membership can be explained by the existence of social norms.We describe a model, incorporating institutional features of the German labour market, which explicitly allows for social custom effects in the determination of union membership. Using panel data for Germany, we find evidence for according effects which restrict freeriding. The impact of social norms tends to increase with net union density. Hence, observed reductions in the demand for union membership can weaken the impact of a norm and accentuate the free-rider problem.

ICT, Innovation and Business Performance in Services: Evidence for Germany and the Netherlands

Using panel data for German and Dutch firms from the services sector, this paper analyses the importance of ICT capital deepening and innovation for productivity. We employ a model that takes into account that innovation and ICT use may be complementary. The results show that the contribution of ICT capital deepening is raised when firms combine ICT use and technological innovations on a more permanent basis. Moreover, the joint impact of ICT use and permanent technological innovation on productivity appears to be of the same order of magnitude in the two countries. However, the direct impacts of innovation on multi-factor productivity seems to be more robust for Germany than for the Netherlands.

Single Motherhood and (Un)Equal Educational Opportunities: Evidence for Germany

We examine the effect of single motherhood on children's secondary school track choice using a sample of 14 years old children drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel. In line with previous studies for the U.S., the U.K. and Sweden, we find a negative correlation between disrupted family structure and children's educational outcome. Looking for alternative explanations for this correlation, we use ordered probit regression models to control for factors related to single motherhood such as lower educational background, lower household income and higher labor supply of the mother. Our evidence suggests that single parenthood reduces school attainment mainly because it is associated with lower resources (income and time) available for the child.

Consumer demand for food diversity: evidence for Germany

Whereas a large number of empirical studies have been devoted to analysing consumer demand for specific products, much less attention has been paid to the household’s demand for product variety (the number of different products consumed in a specific time period). This paper analyses consumer demand for food variety in Germany. The econometric analysis of 4632 households suggests that variety significantly increases with income and the number of children aged between 7 and 17 years and is significantly higher if the family lives in larger cities in East Germany, and the housekeeping person is not additionally working full-time. A single male household consumes a significantly smaller number of different food products. The significant (and positive) impact of household income on food variety is in line with the hypothesis that consumption evolves along a hierarchical order as income increases.

Norm-Based Trade Union Membership: Evidence for Germany

In the absence of closed-shops and discriminatory wage policies, union membership can be explained by the existence of social norms. We describe a model, incorporating institutional features of the German labour market, which explicitly allows for social custom effects in the determination of union membership. Using panel data for Germany, we find evidence for according effects which restrict freeriding. The impact of social norms tends to increase with net union density. Hence, observed reductions in the demand for union membership can weaken the impact of a norm and accentuate the free-rider problem.