Documents Kiel Institute for the World Economy 12 results

"Because of large economic and environmental asymmetries among world regions and the incentive to free ride, an international climate Regime with broad participation is hard to reach. Most of the so far proposed Regimes base on an allocation of emission rights that is to be perceived as fair. Yet, there are also some arguments to focus more on the actual welfare implications of different Regimes and to aim for a "fair" Distribution of resulting costs. Using the Computable General Equilibrium model DART, we analyze the driving Forces of welfare implications in different Scenarios where a global Emission target derived from the 2 degree target is reached. These include two Regimes that are often presumed to be "fair", namely a harmonized international carbon tax and a cap and trade System based on the convergence of per capita Emission rights, and additionally an "equal loss" Scenario where welfare losses relative to a Business as usual Scenario are equal for all Major world regions. We show that "equal losses" would mean in particular to compensate for the effects of climate policy on energy markets and e.g. to compensate for the loss of oil revenues as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) argues for."

"This paper estimates the effects of offshoring on labour market inequalities between skill groups based on German industry level data from 1995 to 2007. Our main findings are the following: First, offshoring is on average biased in favour of high-skilled employees and in disfavour of low-skilled employees. This effect is strongly driven by the manufacturing sector, material offshoring, and offshoring to Central and Eastern Europe. Second, we find that the labour market adjusts to offshoring mainly through changes in relative wages rather than changes in relative employment. This runs counter to the classical argument that German labour market institutions (collective bargaining, unemployment benefits, etc.) lead to rigid wage structures and high unemployment rates. Third, in the service sector it is the group of medium-skilled employees which is particularly exposed to offshoring, possibly due to the different nature of tasks there. Fourth, medium-skilled employees are also negatively affected by technological change, which explains recent trends towards a polarisation in labour demand."

"The effects of unions on productivity and firm performance have been the topic of extensive research. Existing studies have, however, primarily focused on firm-level bargaining and on markets that are characterised by a small and fixed number of identical firms. This paper studies how different unionisation structures affect firm productivity and firm performance in a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms and free entry. While centralised bargaining induces tougher selection among heterogeneous producers and thus increases average productivity, firm-level bargaining allows less productive entrants to remain in the market. Centralised bargaining also results in higher average output and profit levels than either decentralised bargaining or a competitive labour market. From the perspective of consumers, the choice between centralised and decentralised bargaining involves a potential trade-off between product variety and product prices."

"We introduce search and matching unemployment into a model of trade with differentiated goods and heterogeneous firms. Countries may differ with respect to size, geographical location, and labor market institutions. Contrary to the literature, our single-sector perspective pays special attention to the role of income effects and shows that bad institutions in one country worsen labor market outcomes not only in that country but also in its trading partners. This spill-over effect is conditioned by trade costs and country size: smaller and/or more centrally located nations suffer less from inefficient policies at home and are more heavily affected from spill-overs abroad than larger and/or peripheral ones. We offer empirical evidence for a panel of 20 rich OECD countries. Carefully controlling for institutional features and for business cycle comovements between countries, we confirm our qualitative theoretical predictions. However, the magnitude of spill-over effects is larger in the data than in the theoretical model. We show that introducing real wage rigidity can remedy this problem."

"We use data on motives of international outsourcing and location choices from a recent survey of European companies to assess the labour market repercussions at home. Employing Tobit models we differentiate between job losses as well as job creation for high and low skilled employees at the sector level in ten European home countries. Our findings are in conflict with public concerns about adverse employment effects resulting primarily from cost-oriented sourcing in low wage locations. The quantitative impact on job losses remains modest in the case of cost-saving motives. The simple divide between low and high wage locations hides substantial heterogeneity within both groups. We also find that job losses are typically compensated partly by new job creation, particularly for high skilled workers."

"This paper analyses how and to which degree the Danish flexicurity concept and its various elements achieve the renowned Danish miracle by evaluating their unemployment and inequality effects and their complementarities. We develop a microfounded model of searching workers and firms, calibrate it to Germany and perform the policy experiment of implementing the full Danish flexicurity set of policies (low employment protection, high unemployment benefits and workfare). Our results show that implementing the Danish flexicurity concept in Germany would reduce unemployment and earnings inequality substantially. Furthermore our analysis illustrates that the Danish flexicurity policies have some apparent complementarities in Germany - the reduction of unemployment effect is nearly 40% greater when the policies are implemented in conjunction than in isolation."

"We experimentally test the truth-telling mechanism proposed by Montero (2008) for eliciting firms' abatement costs. We compare this mechanism with two well-known alternative allocation mechanisms, free and costly allocation of permits at the Pigouvian price. Controlling for the number of firms and the firms' maximal emissions, we find that, in line with the theoretical predictions, firms over-report their maximal emissions under free allocation of permits and under-report these under costly allocation of permits. Under Montero's mechanism, by contrast, firms almost always report their maximal emissions truthfully. However, in terms of efficiency, the difference between Montero's mechanism and costly allocation disappears with industries including more than one firm."

"Im Zuge der Corona Krise werden europäische Gemeinschaftsanleihen zur Unterstützung von besonders betroffenen Mitgliedsländern intensiv diskutiert. Die Autoren zeigen, dass Gemeinschaftsanleihen europäischer Staaten keine Neuigkeit wären. Seit den 1970er Jahren hat die Europäische Kommission wiederholt Anleihen auf dem privaten Kapitalmarkt ausgegeben, die durch die Mitgliedsländer garantiert und an Krisenländer ausgeschüttet wurden. „Coronabonds“, wie derzeit diskutiert, stünden in einer langen Tradition. Die erste Gemeinschaftsanleihe wurde 1976 zu Gunsten Italiens und Irlands emittiert, in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren folgten weitere Anleihen für Frankreich, Griechenland und Portugal, sowie, nach 2008, für Ungarn, Lettland und Rumänien. Zusätzlich wurde 2012 der ESM für Eurozonen-Länder etabliert. Aus der Geschichte kann somit die Lehre gezogen werden, dass die europäischen Regierungen in tiefen Krisen immer wieder bereit waren gemeinschaftliche Anleihen auszugeben und dafür zu haften, wenn auch nur für begrenzte Zeit. Die dafür notwendigen Institutionen wurden flexibel und kurzfristig entwickelt. Eine zweite Lehre ist, dass der EU Haushalt seit den 70er Jahren wiederholt genutzt wurde, um die Rückzahlung der Anleihen zu garantieren. Es ist kein Zufall, dass derzeit auch wieder vorgeschlagen wird „Coronabonds“ über einen deutlich erweiterten EU Haushalt zu bedienen"