Jahresbericht 2004/2005

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Reciprocity and Profit Sharing: Is There an Inverse U-shaped Relationship?

Free-riding potentially limits the effectiveness of profit sharing in motivating workers. While reciprocity can mitigate this problem, it need not be uniformly productive. We show that the probability of receiving profit sharing takes an inverse U-shape as detailed individual survey measures of reciprocity increase. This is consistent with moderate but not extreme reciprocity stimulating productivity. We support one potential causation path by showing that extreme positive (negative) reciprocity is associated with extremely high (low) socializing and among workers receiving profit sharing, an intermediate degree of socializing is associated with the maximum amount of paid and unpaid overtime, a productivity proxy.     

Unit root testing

Summary The occurrence of unit roots in economic time series has far reaching consequences for univariate as well as multivariate econometric modelling. Therefore, unit root tests are nowadays the starting point of most empirical time series studies. The oldest and most widely used test is due to Dickey and Fuller (1979). Reviewing this test and variants thereof we focus on the importance of modelling the deterministic component. In particular, we survey the growing literature on tests accounting for structural shifts. Finally, further applied aspects are addressed, for instance, how to get the size correct and obtain good power at the same time. We thank Mu-Chun Wang for producing the figures, and an anonymous referee for comments improving the presentation.     

Autoregressive distributed lag models and cointegration

Summary This paper considers cointegration analysis within an autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) framework. First, different reparameterizations and interpretations are reviewed. Then we show that the estimation of a cointegrating vector from an ADL specification is equivalent to that from an error-correction (EC) model. Therefore, asymptotic normality available in the ADL model under exogeneity carries over to the EC estimator. Next, we review cointegration tests based on EC regressions. Special attention is paid to the effect of linear time trends in case of regressions without detrending. Finally, the relevance of our asymptotic results in finite samples is investigated by means of computer experiments. In particular, it turns out that the conditional EC model is superior to the unconditional one. We thank Vladimir Kuzin for excellent research assistance and Surayyo Kabilova for skillful word processing. Moreover, we are grateful to an anonymous referee for clarifying comments.     

The Jewish Emigration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany

Since the end of the 1980s a massive emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) can be observed. Israel and the United States were the most important receiving countries, followed by Germany, a comparatively new immigration destination for Jews from the successor states of the USSR. One of the reasons the German Government allowed the admission of Jews from post-Soviet states was the Jewish community's claim that this immigration might rejuvenate the German Jewish population in the longer run. Using an index of demographic aging (Billeter's J), the following article examines if this has actually happened. Findings suggest that immigration actually initiated a process of rejuvenation in the Jewish population in Germany. However, it was reversed during the end of the 1990s because of an unaffected low fertility.