Hertie School Research Repository
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Social versus liberal collective skill formation systems? A comparative-historical analysis of the role of trade unions in German and Swiss VET
No full textWe distinguish between social and liberal collective skill formation systems and demonstrate that the German VET system is a social system with a strong (parity) role for trade unions in its governance. In contrast, unions play a considerably weaker role in the more liberal Swiss system, which privileges employers’ interests. We show that the different position of unions in VET systems has the expected consequences on a range of indicators. We further examine why unions are less important in Switzerland and show how, after the First World War, differences in the institutional environment and power resources of the union movements set Germany and Switzerland on different paths, which are still visible today
Taking a closer look: How to improve the design of the Solvency Support Instrument
No full textThe Solvency Support Instrument (SSI) is central to the European Commission’s proposal to mitigate economic damage of the pandemic. It would use part of the money raised under the Recovery Instrument to provide equity support to struggling firms. It could become a powerful tool for the recovery. However, in its current form, the instrument risks providing free lunch bailouts for owners and private investors without ensuring that public support secures jobs, avoids market concentration, and puts firms on a growth path more conducive with the EU’s broader industrial policy goals. To remedy these shortcomings, the instrument needs clear political criteria for equity support and better political control
What the European Council’s MFF / Recovery deal tells us about the EU’s global ambition
No full textAfter four days of intense negotiations, EU leaders have finally reached an agreement on the EU´s long-term EU budget and post-Covid recovery fund. The final compromise leaves mixed feelings. It truly constitutes a historically ambitious package which almost doubles EU spending for 2021-2024 with money raised on the financial markets. Internal solidarity and economic recovery are key pre-conditions for wielding power externally and being resilient to external influence. The contrast between the initial lack of intra-European solidarity and China’s so-called “mask diplomacy” underlined by targeted disinformation illustrates this point. At the same time, we saw a traditional pattern in the European Council’s budgetary negotiations: the compromise has been reached by largely preserving spending pre-allocated to Member States – e.g. agriculture and cohesion spending, the new facility providing support to national recovery and resilience plans - and by drastically cutting key EU programmes financing EU-level public goods and thus delivering added value for all – in areas such as research and innovation, mobility, development aid or internal and external security
Can tobacco companies be good corporate citizens?
No full textTobacco companies have jumped on the Corporate social responsibility (CSR) bandwagon as a tentative to be societally accepted as responsible actors and good corporate citizens. This is however not possible for two reasons. First, the product they sell is lethal and thus not compatible with the precondition of doing no harm to be a good corporate citizen. Second, the behavior of tobacco firms is not responsible, being illustrated by four examples: junk science versus sound science strategy, seducing young smokers, political lobbying and getting customers on new markets. To conclude, three implications for regulating the activities of the tobacco industry are given
Meta-reviewing the business and society field through sociological paradigms: Towards pluralistic re-presentations of corporate social responsibility
No full textAlthough the growth of the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) calls for more diverse exercises of reviewing, most reviews of CSR research present the organising categories on which they build as taken-for-granted. In so doing, they reify a structural-functionalist orientation and a linear view of time while failing to represent accurately alternative post-structural and anti-structural CSR paradigms. Building on an analysis of 40 reviews of the CSR field and on insights from the social studies of science, this paper revisits the notion of field re-presentation and highlights the need for building on categories, which embed a richer set of ontological assumptions to represent the CSR field in a manner that could maintain a dose of ontological and epistemological pluralism and diversity. We finally discuss the implications of our analysis to enhance CSR theory-building, cross-fertilize insights from distinct CSR paradigms and develop alternative assumptions to investigate empirically CSR phenomena
50 Days of Lockdown: Measuring India’s Success in Arresting COVID-19
No full textAs India completes 50 days of lockdown, this report presents the findings of a data-driven enquiry into the extent to which the lockdown has achieved its health objectives and arrested the spread of COVID-19. The success is measured on four parameters: flattening the curve, reducing the growth rate of new cases, containing the spread, and improving healthcare capacity. The findings show that while the lockdown has flattened the curve to an extent, it has failed to reverse the trend or contain the disease. Significant changes in strategy would have to be adopted to arrest the spread of COVID-19
On capital utilization in the hydrogen economy: The quest to minimize idle capacity in renewables-rich energy systems
No full textThe hydrogen economy is currently experiencing a surge in attention, partly due to the possibility of absorbing wind and solar energy production peaks through electrolysis. A fundamental challenge with this approach is low utilization rates of various parts of the integrated electricity-hydrogen system. To assess the importance of capacity utilization, this paper introduces a novel stylized numerical energy system model incorporating the major elements of electricity and hydrogen generation, transmission and storage, including both "green" hydrogen from electrolysis and "blue" hydrogen from natural gas reforming with CO2 capture and storage (CCS). Balancing renewables with electrolysis results in low utilization of electrolyzers, hydrogen pipelines and storage infrastructure, or electricity transmission networks, depending on whether electrolyzers are co-located with wind farms or demand centers. Blue hydrogen scenarios face similar constraints. High renewable shares impose low utilization rates of CO2 capture, transport and storage infrastructure for conventional CCS, and of hydrogen transmission and storage infrastructure for a novel process (gas switching reforming) that enables flexible power and hydrogen production. In conclusion, both green and blue hydrogen can facilitate the integration of wind and solar energy, but the cost related to low capacity utilization erodes much of the expected economic benefit
Economic implications of forecasting electricity generation from variable renewable energy sources
No full textShort-term forecasting of electricity generation from variable renewable energy sources is not an end in itself but should provide some net benefit to its user. In the case of electricity trading, which is in the focus of this paper, the benefit can be quantified in terms of an improved economic outcome. Although some effort has been made to evaluate and to improve the profitability of electricity forecasts, the understanding of the underlying effects has remained incomplete so far. In this paper, we develop a more comprehensive theoretical framework of the connection between the statistical and the economic properties of day-ahead electricity forecasts. We find that, apart from the accuracy and the bias, which have already been extensively researched, the correlation between the forecast errors and the market price spread determines the economic implications - a phenomenon which we refer to as ‘correlation effect’. Our analysis is completed by a case study on solar electricity forecasting in Germany which illustrates the relevance and the limits of both our theoretical framework and the correlation effect
Educational differences in cohort fertility across subnational regions in Europe
No full textEducational differences in female cohort fertility vary strongly across high-income countries and over time, but knowledge about how educational fertility differentials play out at the sub-national regional level is limited. Examining these sub-national regional patterns might improve our understanding of national patterns, as regionally varying contextual conditions may affect fertility. This study provides for the first time for a large number of European countries a comprehensive account of educational differences in the cohort fertility rate (CFR) at the sub-national regional level. We harmonise data from population registers, censuses, and large-sample surveys for 15 countries to measure women’s completed fertility by educational level and region of residence at the end of the reproductive lifespan. In order to explore associations between educational differences in CFRs and levels of economic development, we link our data to regional GDP per capita. Empirical Bayesian estimation is used to reduce uncertainty in the regional fertility estimates. We document an overall negative gradient between the CFR and level of education, and notable regional variation in the gradient. The steepness of the gradient is inversely related to the economic development level. It is steepest in the least developed regions and close to zero in the most developed regions. This tendency is observed within countries as well as across all regions of all countries. Our findings underline the variability of educational gradients in women’s fertility, suggest that higher levels of development may be associated with less negative gradients, and call for more in-depth sub-national-level fertility analyses by education