Vienna University of Economics and Business
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Does early educational tracking contribute to gender gaps in test achievement? A cross-country assessment
Get PDFOn average, boys score higher than girls on math achievement tests and girls score higher than boys in reading. A worrying fact is that these gaps increase between primary and secondary school. This paper investigates the role of early educational tracking (sorting students into different types of secondary schools at an early age) on gender gaps in test achievement. We analyze PISA, PIRLS, and TIMSS data to study how cross-country variation in the age of first tracking affects the country-specifc widening gender gap in a difference-in-differences framework. We find strong evidence that early tracking increases gender differences in reading. Early tracking also increases the gender gap in math scores, but the results for math are sensitive to the year of the dataset analyzed and to the inclusion of particular countries in the analysis. For both subjects, every year for which the age of first tracking is postponed weakens the effect of early tracking on the gender gap in
achievement.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie
The money-inflation nexus revisited
Get PDFThis paper proposes a Bayesian Logistic Smooth Transition Autoregressive (LSTAR) model with stochastic volatility (SV) to model inflation dynamics in a nonlinear fashion.
Inflationary regimes are determined by smoothed money growth which serves as a transition variable that governs the transition between regimes. We apply this approach on
quarterly data from the US, the UK and Canada and are able to identify well-known, high inflation periods in the samples. Moreover, our results suggest that the role of
money growth is specific to the economy under scrutiny. Finally, we analyse a variety of different model specifications and are able to confirm that adjusted money growth still has leading indicator properties on inflation regimes.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie
Partnership in Times of COVID-19: Government and Civil Society in Austria
Get PDFHow did the relation between Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and government develop during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, once governments had taken restrictive measures to lock down economic and public life? Austria is used as an example of a corporatist welfare state whereby collaboration between government and CSOs occurs particularly in the fields of social services, health-care, and youth. Our analysis focuses on the social service sector and differentiates between several social policy fields. We hereby analyze data from qualitative interviews with CEOs from 30 CSOs, four group discussions with another 30 representatives of CSOs, public agencies and authorities, and from a standardized questionnaire (n = 99 CSOs). We also utilize our own experiences as participant observers in meetings between CSOs and government. Results indicate that CSOs suffered financially partly due to a decrease in income, though mostly due to an increase in cost. In social services in particular, they also faced hardships caused by the need to reorganize operations and human resources, and by the increased demands of customers. Federal government took responsibility for supporting CSOs financially, though such support was hampered by unclear competencies in Austria’s multilayered federal system
Triage 4.0: On Death Algorithms and Technological Selection. Is Today’s Data- Driven Medical System Still Compatible with the Constitution?
Get PDFHealth data bear great promises for a healthier and happier life, but they also make us vulnerable. Making use of millions or billions of data points, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now creating new benefits. For sure, harvesting Big Data can have great potentials for the health system, too. It can support accurate diagnoses, better treatments and greater cost effectiveness. However, it can also have undesirable implications, often in the sense of undesired side effects, which may in fact be terrible. Examples for this, as discussed in this article, are discrimination, the mechanisation of death, and genetic, social, behavioural or technological selection, which may imply eugenic effects or social Darwinism. As many unintended effects become visible only after years, we still lack sufficient criteria, long-term experience and advanced methods to reliably exclude that things may go terribly wrong. Handing over decision-making, responsibility or control to machines, could be dangerous and irresponsible. It would also be in serious conflict with human rights and our constitution
Banks’ tax disclosure, financial secrecy, and tax haven heterogeneity
Get PDFThis study investigates the effect of mandatory public Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) for European banks on their presence in tax and regulatory havens. We find that the number of subsidiaries of European banks in tax havens declines significantly after the introduction of mandatory public CbCR in contrast to insurance firms that need not disclose. We document that this decline is mainly driven by a reduction of subsidiaries in small countries with little economic substance (“dot havens”) and in tax havens that are regulatory havens at the same time, i.e., with high financial secrecy. Further, we find that high exposure to reputational risk is a major amplifier of reorganizational activities. Our results explain prior mixed evidence and document that CbCR effectively curbs tax haven presence only under specific circumstances, i.e., in countries offering both tax shelter and financial secrecy, and more strongly for banks with high reputational risk. These findings suggest that increased tax disclosure on banks does not effectively attenuate tax haven presence per se, but only for a subset of havens and banks. Policymakers need to be aware of these limitations, especially during the current discussion of extending public CbCR to all large multinationals.Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Serie
Pannonische Aufbrüche. Sozialrevolten im westungarischen Raum von den frühen Bauernaufständen bis zur Räteperiode 1918/19. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Burgenlandes
Get PDFControl choices and enactments in IS development projects: Implications for legitimacy perceptions and compliance intentions
Get PDFExtant research on the control of IS development projects is largely oriented around control choices and en-actments from the perspective of managers, thereby neglecting employees’ legitimacy perceptions. Little is known about how such perceptions affect employees’ intentions to comply with controls. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a factorial survey with 258 IS developers nested in 19 organizations. Our multilevel analysis shows that all four considered legitimacy dimensions are primarily a function of control mode and style, and to a lesser extent of control degree. Moreover, legitimacy operating on fairness and autonomy is an important lever for increasing compliance intentions
Keeping Up With the Novaks? Income Distribution as a Determinant of Household Debt in CESEE
Get PDFThis paper constitutes an initial attempt to shed light on the role of income distribution for household debt in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE). Using household-level data from the OeNB’s Euro Survey for the period 2008–2018, we address the question whether interpersonal comparisons (“Keeping up with the Novaks”) are associated with the probability of having a loan and planning to take out a loan. Applying multilevel probit modeling to consider the hierarchical structure of the data, our results support the notion that higher income inequality is negatively correlated with the probability of having a loan at the bottom of the distribution, and positively at the top. We show this impact for almost all components of household debt, but evidence is strongest for mortgage and foreign currency loans. Loan plans are associated with income inequality at the very top of the income distribution
"Business Programming" – Critical Factors from Zero to Portable GUI Programming in Four Hours
Get PDFTeaching programming from scratch in a single semester such that in the end BA students become able to create GUI programs that run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux on their own appears to be impossible at first. However, over the course of twenty years such an endeavor has become successful at the WU Vienna, with 25,000 students one of the largest business administration Universities in Europe. The teaching load for the students is 200 hours (8 ECTS, European Credit Transfer System) of which 60 hours (4 hours per week, 15 weeks a semester) have to be attended in class. One critical success factor thereby is the programming language, another the goals that get defined for each installment of the syllabus, and finally, the pedagogical principles that have to be applied. This submission will give a bird eye’s view of these critical success factors such that they can be reasoned and discussed