Documents Rammer, Christian 7 results

"Der Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit hinter der oft konstatierten Investitionsschwäche der europäischen Wirtschaft eine Strukturverschiebung von materiellen zu immateriellen Investitionen steht. Da letztere nur zum Teil unter den Investitionsbegriff der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnung fallen, könnte der beobachtbare Rückgang der Investitionsquote nur ein scheinbarer sein, da ihm steigende Ausgaben für die Bildung von immateriellem Kapital wie z.B. unternehmerischen Kompetenzen (u.a. Markenwerte, Humanund Organisationskapital) oder anderen Formen nichttechnischen neuen Wissens gegenüberstehen. Auf Basis von Daten der gewerblichen Wirtschaft Deutschlands zeigen wir zum einen, dass in der Tat Ausgaben für immaterielle Kapitalgüter im vergangenen Jahrzehnt deutlich stärker angestiegen sind als die Investitionen für Sachkapital. Zweitens belegen mikroökonometrische Panelanalysen, dass diese Investitionen höhere Produktivitätsbeiträge leisten als Sachkapitalinvestitionen und somit für die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der Unternehmen immer wichtiger werden. Die Wirtschaftspolitik sollte daher die steuerlichen und finanziellen Rahmenbedingungen für immaterielle Investitionen verbessern."

"The EU's stagnation on many innovation indicators led to a number of efforts to spur a turnaround. One of most visible projects has been the Horizon 2020 strategy, which devotes unprecedented levels of funding to the promotion of R&D and innovation. But does this strategy address the right issues to promote innovation? Is Horizon 2020 right to ignore geographical considerations when allocating funding? What policy instruments does Horizon 2020 recommend, and has it led to novel strategies being employed, beyond the increase in R&D funding? What steps are individual countries taking? Most importantly, what impact is Horizon 2020 actually having on innovation in the EU?"

"Der seit 1997 im Dachdeckerhandwerk eingeführte und seit 2003 bundeseinheitlich geregelte, allgemeinverbindliche Mindestlohn führt vor allem in Ostdeutschland auch im internationalen Vergleich zu einer starken Betroffenheit der Branche vom Mindestlohn. Die damit einhergehende effektive Kostenbelastung fällt dennoch begrenzt aus. Auf der Basis von Differenz-von-Differenzen-Schätzungen sowohl im Vergleich zu einer nicht von einem Mindestlohn betroffenen Baunebenbranche als auch auf Basis eines Vergleichs von unterschiedlich stark durch den Mindestlohn betroffenen Beschäftigten des Dachdeckerhandwerks, werden die kausalen Wirkungen im Hinblick auf Beschäftigung, Arbeitnehmerschutz und Wettbewerb untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass sich die mit dem Mindestlohn einhergehenden Lohnzuwächse nur teilweise in Einkommenszuwächse übersetzen. Zudem lassen sich trotz einiger negativer Beschäftigungsergebnisse für die von einem bindenden Mindestlohn betroffenen Beschäftigten keine Veränderung der Gesamtbeschäftigung feststellen. Dies liegt möglicherweise daran, dass mindestlohnbedingte Kostensteigerungen zumindest teilweise über höhere Preise an die Kunden weitergegeben wurden. Eindeutige Effekte auf die Wettbewerbssituation im Dachdeckerhandwerk konnten hingegen nicht nachgewiesen werden, wenngleich sich für Ostdeutschland eine gewisse Verschiebung der Gründungstätigkeit und des Unternehmensbestands in Richtung Ein-Personen-Unternehmen zeigt."

"In 1997, a minimum wage has been introduced in the German roofing sector which has been regularly increased since then. As a result, the share of workers for whom the minimum wage is binding increased steadily. In eastern Germany, this binding rate reached 60% by the mid 2000s, while workers in western Germany were less affected by the minimum wage. Against this background, the present paper investigates the effect of the minimum wage on competition in the roofing sector. Competition is measured by market entry, market exit and profits of firms active in the market. Our analysis is guided by the argument that the minimum wages may by used by established firms to raise rivals' costs and prevent entry by potential competitors. Lower entry rates reduce price competition and may stabilise or even raise profits of established firms.
We analyse the effects of the minimum wage using a difference-in-differences framework, based on a firm panel data set that covers all firms in the roofing sector as well as in the plumbing sector -which serves as reference sector- from 1996 to 2010. Firm-level panel estimations are employed to identify wage effects on profits while panel estimations at the level of regional markets are used to capture likely effects on entries and exits. As the binding rate of the minimum wage is significantly different between eastern and western Germany, all models are estimated separately for the two regions. In addition, firms are separated into two groups, sole traders (i.e. firms not affected by the minimum wage since they do not employ workers) and firms with employees (which do employ workers).
Estimation results reveal that the minimum wage had no effects on competition in the roofing sector in western Germany while some evidence for the theory on raising rivals' cost can be found for eastern Germany. In eastern Germany, both market entries and market exits of firms with employees were reduced by the minimum wage. At the same time, the minimum wage contributed to higher profits of established firms, obviously caused by the lower level of competition due to lower entry and exit rates. Interestingly, the minimum wage clearly favoured market entries by sole traders in eastern Germany, which may point to some type of evasion strategy since almost all newly entering sole traders refrained from employing workers at a later stage."

"Circular economy (CE) describes an economic concept that aims at saving resources by minimizing the use of material and energy over the entire life-cycle or products, including repair, reuse and recycling. CE innovations help to realize the goals of a sustainable development and target both the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainability. This paper looks at the economic and social dimensions by investigating the performance and employment effects of CE innovations at the firm level. CE innovations such as the reduction of energy and material consumption or the recycling of waste, water or material may lead to cost savings which in turn can increase the competitiveness of the firm and raise demand for a firm's products. Our econometric analysis uses data of two waves of the German part of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The performance effects of CE innovations measured by the financial standing of a firm and by turnover growth tend to be positive. The results of quantile regressions show that this is also the case for employment effects."

"Skilled labor is a key input to the innovation process. A shortage in supply of skilled labor may hence impede innovation activities, resulting in lower productivity gains. While governments are concerned about these likely negative impacts, there is only limited empirical evidence whether and to what extent labor shortage affects innovation activities. The paper addresses this question using panel data from three waves (2017 to 2019) of the German innovation survey. We measure labor shortage by job openings that could not be filled at all, not with the required skills or only with significant delay, distinguishing different skill levels. We analyze whether labor shortage resulted in stopping or abandoning of innovation projects. Endogeneity issues are tackled by instrumental variable estimation techniques. Our results show that innovative firms are more likely to be subject to skill shortage, whereas skill shortage induces the cancelation of innovation projects. Effects are stronger for labor shortage related to professional occupations and less for academic qualifications."

"Governments at the EU and the member state level are placing increased emphasis on public research and development (R&D) for energy and the environment to advance a circular economy (CE). To achieve CE goals, it is critical to engage SMEs as they represent the vast majority of enterprises in the EU. To date, there is a lack of evidence regarding the impact of these public R&D investments on SMEs' CE activities. We address this gap by analysing the impact of public environmental and energy R&D on CE implementation and investment by SMEs. The study draws from a multi-level database of 10,618 SMEs across 28 EU member states for the period 2013–2015 from the Flash Eurobarometer 441 survey and country-level data from other EU sources. Employing a mixed-level probit regression, we find that the knowledge generated by public environmental and energy R&D, defined as country-level investments in this activity from 2004 to 2015, positively affects SMEs' implementation of CE activities. Additionally, the study finds that public environmental and energy R&D affects the level of SMEs' investment in CE activities negatively, suggesting that more public R&D can substitute for the financial efforts that SMEs have to take when implementing CE activities."