University of Lüneburg Working paper series in economics
ISSN: 1860-5508. - Hrsg.: Leuphana Universität Lüneburg/Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre. - ZDB-ID: 2238516-2. - Nr.1.2005 -
Filtern
Sprache
- Englisch (21) (entfernen)
Schlagworte
- Export (7)
- Exports (7)
- Produktivität (7)
- productivity (7)
- Deutschland (5)
- Germany (5)
- micro data (5)
- Personenbezogene Daten (4)
- Unternehmer (3)
- Versicherung (2)
Institut
65
We use comparable micro level panel data for 14 countries and a set of identically specified empirical models to investigate the relationship between exports and productivity. Our overall results are in line with the big picture that is by now familiar from the literature: Exporters are more productive than non-exporters when observed and unobserved heterogeneity are controlled for, and these exporter productivity premia tend to increase with the share of exports in total sales; there is strong evidence in favour of self-selection of more productive firms into export markets, but nearly no evidence in favour of the learning-by-exporting hypothesis. We document that the exporter premia differ considerably across countries in identically specified empirical models. In a meta-analysis of our results we find that countries that are more open and have more effective government report higher productivity premia. However, the level of development per se does not appear to be an explanation for the observed cross-country differences.
43
Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality data at the plant level, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between productivity and size of the export market for Germany, a leading actor on the world market for manufactured goods. It documents that firms that export to countries inside the euro-zone are more productive than firms that sell their products in Germany only, but less productive than firms that export to countries outside the euro-zone, too. This is in line with the hypothesis that export markets outside the euro-zone have higher entry costs that can only by paid by more productive firms.
46
Credit Constraints, Idiosyncratic Risks, and Wealth Distribution in a Heterogeneous Agent Model
(2007)
This paper examines the effects of credit market imperfections and idiosyncratic risks on occupational choice, capital accumulation, as well as on the income and wealth distribution in a two sector heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model. Workers and firm owners are subject to idiosyncratic shocks. Entrepreneurship is the riskier occupation. Compared to an economy with perfect capital markets, we find for the case of serially correlated shocks that more individuals choose the entrepreneurial profession in the presence of credit constraints, and that the fluctuation between occupations increases too. Workers and entrepreneurs with high individual productivity tend to remain in their present occupation, whereas low productivity individuals are more likely to switch between professions. Interestingly, these results reverse if we assume iid shocks, thus indicating that the nature of the underlying shocks plays an important role for the general equilibrium effects. In general, the likelihood of entrepreneurship increases with individual wealth.
5
This paper discusses the emergence of endogenous redistributive cycles in a stochastic growth model with incomplete asset markets and heterogeneous agents, where agents vote on the degree of progressivity in the taxñtransferñscheme. The model draws from BÈnabou (1996) and ties the bias in the distribution of political power to the degree of inequality in the society, thereby triggering redistributive cycles which then give rise to a nonlinear, cyclical pattern of savings rates, growth and inequality over time.
6
This paper investigates the redistributive effects of taxation on occupational choice and growth. We discuss a twoñsector economy in the spirit of Romer (1990). Agents engage in one of two alternative occupations: either selfñemployment in an intermediate goods sector characterized by monopolistic competition, or employment as an ordinary worker in this sector. Entrepreneurial pro_ts are stochastic. The occupational choice under risk endogenizes the number of _rms in the intermediate goods industry. While the presence of entrepreneurial risk results in a suboptimally low number of _rms and depresses growth, nonñlinear tax schemes are partly capable of compensating the negative by effects by ex post providing a social insurance.
9
This paper analyzes conditions for existence of a strongly rational expectations equilibrium (SREE) in models with private information, where the amount of private information is endogenously determined. It is shown that the conditions for existence of a SREE known from models with exogenously given private information do not change as long as it is impossible to use the information transmitted through market prices. In contrast, these conditions are too weak, when there is such learning from prices. It turns out that the properties of the function which describes the costs that are associated with the individual acquisition of information are important in this respect. In case of constant marginal costs, prices must be half as informative than private signals in order for a SREE to exist. An interpretation of this result that falls back on the famous Grossman–Stiglitz–Paradox is also given.
72
In this paper, we conduct a pan-European efficiency analysis to investigate the performance of European railways with a particular focus on economies of vertical integration. We test the hypothesis that integrated railways realize economies of scope and, thus, produce railway services with a higher level of efficiency. To determine whether joint or separate production is more efficient, we apply a Data Envelopment Analysis super-efficiency bootstrapping model which relates the efficiency for integrated production to a reference set consisting of separated firms which use a different production technology. We find that for a majority of European railways economies of scope exist.
2
Many public goods are characterized by rivalry and/or excludability. This paper introduces both non-excludable and excludable public inputs into a simple endogenous growth model. We derive the equilibrium growth rate and design the optimal tax and user-cost structure. Our results emphasize the role of congestion in determining this optimal financing structure and the consequences this has in turn for the government’s budget. The latter consists of fee and tax revenues that are used to finance the entire public production input and that may or may not suffice to finance the entire public input, depending upon the degree of congestion. We extend the model to allow for monopoly pricing of the user fee by the government. Most of the analysis is conducted for general production functions consistent with endogenous growth, although the case of CES technology is also considered.
34
In the face of uncertainty, ecosystems can provide natural insurance to risk averse users of ecosystem services. We employ a conceptual ecological-economic model to analyze the allocation of (endogenous) risk and ecosystem quality by risk averse ecosystem managers who have access to financial insurance, and study the implications for individually and socially optimal ecosystem management, and policy design. We show that while an improved access to financial insurance leads to lower ecosystem quality, the effect on the free-rider problem and on welfare is determined by ecosystem properties. We derive conditions on ecosystem functioning under which, if financial insurance becomes more accessible, (i) the extent of optimal regulation increases or decreases; and (ii) welfare, in the absence of environmental regulation, increases or decreases.
28
Do exporters really pay higher wages? First evidence from German linked employer-employee data
(2006)
Many plant-level studies find that average wages in exporting firms are higher than in non-exporting firms from the same industry and region. This paper uses a large set of linked employer-employee data from Germany to analyze this exporter wage premium. We show that the wage differential becomes smaller but does not completely vanish when observable and unobservable characteristics of the employees and of the work place are controlled for. For example, blue-collar (white-collar) employees working in a plant with an export-sales ratio of 60 percent earn about 1.8 (0.9) percent more than similar employees in otherwise identical non-exporting plants.