Publications des institutions partenaires
Testing instrument validity for LATE identification based on inequality moment constraints
This paper proposes bootstrap tests for the validity of instrumental variables (IV) in just identified treatment effect models with endogeneity. We demonstrate that the IV assumptions required for the identification of the local average treatment effect (LATE) allow us to both point identify and bound the mean potential outcomes (i) of the always takers (those treated irrespective…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/05/2015
Do Long-term Unemployed Workers Benefit from Targeted Wage Subsidies?
We evaluate a wage subsidy program that is targeted at long-term unemployed
workers in Germany. We use an alternative identification procedure compared to
empirical studies conducted so far. Exploiting the particular program regulations and
large administrative data we estimate the impact of program availability using a regression discontinuity framework. Our…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/02/2015
The Sources of Risk Spillovers Among U.S. REITs : Financial Characteristics and Regional Proximity
In this paper, we estimate the risk spillovers among 74 U.S. REITs using the statedependent sensitivity value-at-risk (SDSVaR) approach. This methodology allows for the quantification of the spillover size as a function of a company's financial condition (tranquil, normal, and volatile REIT prices). We show that the size of risk spillovers is more than twice as large when REITs…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2015
Treatment effects and panel data
It is a major achievement of the econometric treatment effect literature to clarify under which conditions causal effects are non-parametrically identified. The first part of this chapter focuses on the static treatment model. In this part, I show how panel data can be used to improve the credibility of matching and instrumental variable estimators. In practice, these gains come…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2015
Electricity Market Coupling in Europe: Status Quo and Future Challenges
In electricity markets globally, market participants and policymakers increasingly focus on integrating adjacent, yet separate market areas via cross-border trade in electricity. Based on a discussion of the institutional framework for organizing cross-border trade, this paper analyzes how spot and futures prices for wholesale electricity are affected by different degrees of market…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2015
Granting Birthright Citizenship - A Door Opener to Educational Particiation and Success?
Does birthright citizenship boost immigrant children's participation
and success in the host country's educational system? We address this
question using a reform of the German naturalization law in 1999 that
entitled children born after January 1, 2000 to birthright citizenship.
We use a difference-in-difference design that compares children born…
Institution partenaire
English / 11/12/2014
Can't Buy Mommy's Love? Universal Childcare and Children's Long-Term Cognitive Development
What happens to children's long-run cognitive development when introducing universal high-quality childcare for 3-year-olds mainly crowds out family care? To answer this question, we take advantage of a sizeable expansion of publicly subsidized full-time high-quality childcare for 3-year-olds in Spain in the early 1990s. Identification relies on variation in the initial speed of…
Institution partenaire
English / 29/10/2014
When Does Time Matter? Maternal Employment, Children's Time With Parents, and Child Development
This study tests the two assumptions underlying popularly held notions that
maternal employment negatively affects children because it reduces time spent with parents: (1) that maternal employment reduces children's time with parents, and (2) that time with parents affects child outcomes. We analyze children's time-diary data from the Child Development Supplement of…
Institution partenaire
English / 29/10/2014
After-School Care and Children's Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills
What is the impact of after-school center-based care on the development of primary school-aged children? Answering this question is challenging due to non-random selection of children into after-school center-based care. We tackle this challenge using detailed data of the German Child Panel and employing a value-added method. While we do not find significant effects on average, our…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2014
Does Early Child Care Help or Hurt Children's Development?
More children than ever attend center-based care early in life. We study whether children who attend center-based care before age 3 have better or worse language and motor skills, socio-emotional maturity, and school readiness just before entering primary school. In data covering about 36,000 children in one West German state, we use a marginal treatment effects framework to show how…
Institution partenaire
English / 30/09/2014
A test of the conditional independence assumption in sample selection models
Identification in most sample selection models depends on the independence of the regressors and the error terms conditional on the selection probability. All quantile and mean functions are parallel in these models; this implies that quantile estimators cannot reveal any - per assumption non-existing - heterogeneity. Quantile estimators are nevertheless useful for testing the…
Institution partenaire
English / 10/09/2014
Radius matching on the propensity score with bias adjustment: finite sample behaviour, tuning parameters and software implementation
Using a simulation design that is based on empirical data, a recent study by Huber, Lechner and Wunsch (2012) finds that distance-weighted radius matching with bias adjustment as proposed in Lechner, Miquel and Wunsch (2011) is competitive among a broad range of propensity score-based estimators used to correct for mean differences due to observable covariates. In this paper, we…
Institution partenaire
English / 02/08/2014
Causal pitfalls in the decomposition of wage gaps
The decomposition of gender or ethnic wage gaps into explained and unexplained components (often with the aim to assess labor market discrimination) has been a major research agenda in empirical labor economics. This paper demonstrates that conventional decompositions, no matter whether linear or non-parametric, are equivalent to assuming a (probably too) simplistic model of…
Institution partenaire
English / 10/07/2014
The tempest: Natural disasters, Early Shocks and Children's Short- and Long-Run Development
Socio-economic shocks during early childhood are predicted to have detrimental short- and long-run consequences for children's development. We examine this hypothesis using a specific shock: housing damages caused by a super-typhoon. Comparing children, who lived in the same district, but only some experienced housing damages, we can isolate the real-estate shock from any…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/07/2014
Combining Matching and Nonparametric Instrumental Variable estimation: Theory and an Application to the Evaluation of Active Labour Market Policies : Appendix
We show how instrumental variable and matching estimators can be combined in order to identify a broader array of treatment effects. Instrumental variable (IV) estimators are known to estimate effects only for the compliers, representing a subset of the entire population. By combining IV with matching, we can estimate the treatment effects for the always- and never-takers as well.…
Institution partenaire
English / 14/06/2014
A Jackknife-Type Estimator for Portfolio Revision
This paper proposes a novel approach to portfolio revision. The current literature
on portfolio optimization uses a somewhat naïve approach, where portfolio weights are always completely revised after a predefined fixed period. However, one shortcoming of this procedure is that it ignores parameter uncertainty in the estimated portfolio weights, as well as the biasedness of the…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/06/2014
Regional Differences in Perceived Corruption among Ukrainian Firms
This paper investigates regional differences in the perception of corruption and informal practices among Ukrainian firms. Using two different data sets from Ukraine we show that perceived corruption differs significantly across regions, even when taking into account the size, industry, workforce composition, and other characteristics of the firms based on propensity score matching.…
Institution partenaire
English / 09/05/2014
Sensitivity checks for the local average treatment effect
The nonparametric identification of the local average treatment effect (LATE) hinges on the satisfaction of three instrumental variable assumptions: (1) unconfounded assignment of the instrument, (2) no average direct effect of the instrument on the outcome within compliance types (exclusion restriction), and (3) weak monotonicity of the treatment in the instrument. While (1) often…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/05/2014
Treatment evaluation with multiple outcome periods under endogeneity and attrition
This paper develops a nonparametric methodology for treatment evaluation with multiple outcome periods under treatment endogeneity and missing outcomes. We use instrumental variables, pre-treatment characteristics, and short-term (or intermediate) outcomes to identify the average treatment effect on the outcomes of compliers (the subpopulation whose treatment reacts on the instrument…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/03/2014
Insights from Swiss Pension Systems
This chapter takes Switzerland's much praised three-pillar system to illustrate some of the challenges pension system reforms face in an aging society. It shows that policymakers are confronted by some individuals with behavioral anomalies, and by others who strategically exploit the system The trade-off between providing incentives and adequate retirement income limits policy…
Institution partenaire
English / 23/01/2014
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