The Demand for Labor: An Analysis Using Matched Employer–Employee Data from the German LIAB. Will the High Unskilled Worker Own-Wage Elasticity Please Stand Up?

This paper uses matched employee–employer LIAB data to provide panel estimates of the structure of labor demand in western Germany, 1993–2002, distinguishing between highly skilled, skilled, and unskilled labor and between the manufacturing and service sectors. Reflecting current preoccupations, our demand analysis seeks also to accommodate the impact of technology and trade in addition to wages. The bottom-line interests are to provide elasticities of the demand for unskilled (and other) labor that should assist in short-run policy design and to identify the extent of skill biases or otherwise in trade and technology.

Explaining the demand for structured financial products: survey and field experiment evidence

In many countries structured investment products are popular among retail investors. We explain the demand for these products using unique field data where we let subjects freely design their “favorite” structured product. Results suggest that the supply with capital protected products (guarantee certificates) might indeed be demand-driven. This does not seem to be the case for other product categories where marketing and sales practices might play a more important role. In a survey among financial practitioners we find furthermore that a demand for capital protected products can be explained by loss aversion and saving motifs, e.g. for buying a house.     

SCOR model application in developing countries: challenges & requirements

Due to the changes in the nature of business and competition from company versus company to supply chain versus supply chain, the importance of improving the entire supply chain holistically is becoming an increasingly important topic in recent studies. Industry practitioners and academics are focusing on developing a modelling tool for this purpose. However, such efforts were unsuccessful. The main reasons for failure are that the existing models are developed and tested based on the experiences of manufacturing firms in the developed world. The nature of the existing firms, their operating and business processes situation in developing countries vary greatly from the manufacturing processes and the surrounding environment in developed countries. However, the absence of an agreed upon, common language and standardised modelling tools for the entire supply chains hampers the global supply chain improvement initiatives. This paper focuses on addressing the issue of a how standardised and widely accepted model, like the SCOR, can be applied despite the different circumstances. The firms’ supply chain characteristics and new requirement for the model adaptation were collected based on the available literature and field analysis results. The research paper results focus on the make and delivery processes for illustration and evaluation.     

The impact of attitudes and behavioral costs on environmental behavior: A natural experiment on household waste recycling

Numerous studies have shown the importance of incentives as well as of attitudes in explaining pro-environmental behavior. Reported attitude effects, however, are generally rather small and exhibit considerable variation among studies. Different theoretical perspectives can account for this finding: whereas theories of rational action suggest additive effects of costs and attitudes, the low-cost hypothesis and dual-process theories imply interaction effects - in different directions, resulting from different mechanisms. The present study tries to overcome the shortcomings of past research by using advanced statistical methods to test competitive hypotheses in the context of post-consumer waste recycling. We utilize data from a natural experiment on recycling participation in Cologne/Germany (n = 1882) in which the incentive structure for recycling changed due to the conversion of the recycling scheme from a drop-off system to curbside collection. In order to avoid self-selection bias, we conducted pre- and post-treatment surveys and applied conditional fixed-effects regression models. We found that curbside collection had a strong impact on recycling participation and attitudes had a moderate effect. The interaction is negative but statistically insignificant. Our findings contradict the low-cost hypothesis and provide some evidence that environmental concerns moderate the effect of the recycling scheme. We cannot, however, reject the rational choice proposition of mere additive effects.     

Postnatal quality of life — A content analysis of qualitative results to the Mother-Generated Index

Background

The Mother-Generated Index (MGI) assesses postnatal quality of life (QoL) without providing a predefined checklist, thus offering mothers the opportunity to identify areas of life affected by having a baby.

Geburten aus geplanten und ungeplanten Schwangerschaften – Die Relevanz von Bildung,Arbeitslosigkeit und PartnerschaftChildren from Planned and Unplanned Pregnancies: The Importance of Education,Unemployment and Partnership

Micro theories on fertility such as the economic theory of family frame fertility behaviour in industrialized countries as a decision. Predictions of these theories have been tested in numerous empirical studies. This research widely ignores that childbirth may also result from unintended pregnancies. We discuss how education, educational and labour market participation as well as partnership status influence unplanned and planned pregnancy in Germany. To test our hypotheses, we use data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study, collected between 2001 and 2013. The focus is on the planning status of pregnancies leading to a first or third birth. Data on women are analysed with event history models for competing risks. Contrary to arguments of high opportunity costs, graduates show an above-average probability of planned pregnancies. Unemployed women, who should have lower opportunity costs, do not have an increased probability of planned pregnancies; instead their first children are more often unplanned. Consensual unions, which are less serious but offer the same opportunities for sexual activity as marriages, have the highest rate of unplanned pregnancies. The overall findings make clear that future surveys and empirical research might benefit from taking intentions into account, which would enable more rigorous testing of fertility theories.