1,720,985 research outputs found
Profit taxation, R&D spending, and innovation
Full text linkWe study how profit taxes affect establishments’ R&D activities. Relying on detailed panel data of R&D-active firms in Germany over two decades, we exploit identifying variation induced by more than 10,000 municipal changes in the local business tax rate and federal tax reforms with locally varying effects. Using event study techniques, we find a sizable, negative effect of profit taxes on establishments’ total R&D spending and patents filed. Zooming into the innovation production process, we uncover substantial heterogeneity in the impact of profit taxation for various R&D input factors, among firm characteristics, and for different types of research projects
Language and Labor Market Success
Full text linkThis article summarizes three different strands of the literature that address the labor market effects of language-related human capital. (1) A general importance is demonstrated in the empirical evidence on earnings and employment effects of literacy as the ability to productively use written information. Significant effects are found for developed and developing countries, leading on an aggregated macro level to a positive relationship between literacy and economic development. (2) The ongoing globalization leads to an increased demand for foreign language proficiency to reduce search and information costs and overcome cultural barriers in the trade of services and goods and tourism. Against the background of scarce skill supply, employers are willing to pay significant wage premia, especially for global and local lingua franca. (3) For international migrants, destination language skills display both a prerequisite for and outcome of successful integration. Investments into destination language skills are highly rewarded by wage returns and higher employment probabilities and act as the medium of translation to apply pre-migration human capital in the destination country labor market
Risky Business – The Role of Individual Risk Attitudes in Occupational Choice
No full textThis study analyzes the relationship of individual risk attitudes and occupational sorting with respect to occupational earnings risk. By using the German Mikrozensus, a precise measure for earnings risk is computed as the occupation-wide standard deviation of wages. Following the procedure proposed by Bonin (2007), this earnings risk measure is used as dependent variable in cross-sectional and panel data estimations using the SOEP data of 2004 and 2006, including a measure of the individual willingness to take risks. The significant relationship in cross-sectional analyses vanishes when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Cross-sectional results seem to be driven by the correlation of unobserved ability and willingness to take risks, and are potentially biased by an attenuation bias due to unstable risk preferences. This study contributes to the existing literature by showing the importance of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and instability of attitudes when examing the effects of personality traits in labor market decisions.Diese Studie analysiert den Zusammenhang von individueller Risikoeinstellung und Berufswahl anhand des Lohnrisikos einzelner Berufe. Auf Basis des deutschen Mikrozensus und des Sozio-Ökonomischen Panels Deutschland wird gezeigt, inwieweit Panelregressionen helfen können, potenzielle Verzerrungen durch unbeobachtbare Heterogenität und Messfehler zu vermeiden. Die Ergebnisse unterscheiden sich stark von bisherigen Arbeiten auf Basis von Querschnittsregressionen
What drives the language proficiency of immigrants?
Full text linkLanguage proficiency is a key driver of immigrant integration. It increases job opportunities and facilitates social and political participation. However, despite its vital importance, many immigrants never reach adequate proficiency in the host country language. Therefore, insights into the underlying processes and associated factors are crucial for designing measures to improve language acquisition. Empirical evidence shows that immigrants differ in their ability to learn languages, in their experience of everyday language usage, and their incentives to learn host country languages. This offers a range of opportunities for public policy intervention
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Costs of Babylon – Linguistic Distance in Applied Economics
No full textLinguistic distance, i.e. the dissimilarity between languages, is an important factor influencing international economic transactions such as migration or international trade flows by imposing hurdles for second language acquisition and increasing transaction costs. To measure these costs, we suggest to use a new measure of linguistic distance. The Levenshtein distance is an easily computed and transparent approach of including linguistic distance into econometric applications. We show its merits in two different applications. First, the effect of linguistic distance in the language acquisition of immigrants is analyzed using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, the German Socio-Economic Panel, and the National Immigrant Survey of Spain. Across countries, linguistic distance is negatively correlated with reported language skills of immigrants. Second, applying a gravity model to data on international trade flows covering 178 countries and 52 years, it is shown that linguistic distance has a strong negative influence on bilateral trade volumes.Die linguistische Distanz zwischen Sprachen, d.h. die Unterschiede in der Aussprache, der grammatikalischen Struktur, dem Wortschatz etc., beeinflusst als ein bedeutender Faktor internationale ökonomische Transaktionen wie den internationalen Handel oder internationale Migrationsströme. Eine höhere linguistische Distanz bedeutet höhere Transaktionskosten und höhere Kosten in der Spracherlangung. Um eine Messung der Kosten von Sprachbarrieren zu ermöglichen, nutzen wir in dieser Studie eine neue Methode der Erfassung sprachlicher Unterschiede. Die sogenannte Levenshtein-Distanz ist ein einfacher und transparenter Ansatz der linguistischen Forschung, der es ermöglicht, linguistische Distanz im Rahmen ökonometrischer Anwendungen zu instrumentalisieren. Die Vorteile dieses Ansatzes werden in zwei verschiedenen Anwendungen dargestellt. Zunächst zeigen wir den negativen Effekt einer ansteigenden linguistischen Distanz auf den Spracherwerb von Immigranten in Spanien, den USA und Deutschland. Die Ergebnisse sind konsistent über die Mikrodatensätze der verschiedenen Gastländer. Zweitens zeigen wir in einem Gravitätsmodell bilateraler Handelsströme die erheblichen negativen Auswirkungen sprachlicher Barrieren auf das Handelsvolumen in internationalen Handelsbeziehungen
Rank, Sex, Drugs, and Crime
Full text linkIn this paper we show that a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort is an important determinant of engaging in risky behaviors. Using longitudinal data from representative US high schools, and exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the cohort composition within a school, we find a strong negative effect of a student's rank on the likelihood of smoking, drinking, having unprotected sex, and engaging in physical fights. We further provide suggestive evidence that these results are driven by status concerns and differences in career expectations
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Linguistic Distance and the Language Fluency of Immigrants
Full text linkWe use a newly available measure of linguistic distance developed by the German Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to explain heterogeneity in language skills of immigrants. This measure is based on an automatical algorithm comparing pronunciation and vocabulary of language pairs. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel covering the period from 1997 to 2003, the linguistic distance measure is applied within a human capital framework of language acquisition. It is shown that linguistic distance is the most important determinant for host country language acquisition and that it explains a large fraction of language skill heterogeneity between immigrants. By lowering the effi ciency and imposing higher costs of language learning, the probability of reporting good language skills is decreasing by increasing linguistic distance.Zur Analyse der Heterogenität in den Sprachfähigkeiten von Immigranten wird ein neues Maß zur Messung der linguistischen Distanz von Sprachen verwendet, das auf einem vom Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie entwickelten Verfahren basiert. Zur Berechnung des Maßes wird ein automatischer Algorithmus verwendet, der die Aussprache von Wörtern innerhalb von Sprachpaaren vergleicht. Für die Untersuchung wird das Maß der linguistischen Distanz in den Rahmen eines Humankapital-Ansatzes zur Erlangung von Sprachfähigkeiten integriert und unter Verwendung von Daten des deutschen Sozio-Ökonomischen Panels für die Jahre 1997-2003 empirisch analysiert. Es wird gezeigt, dass die linguistische Distanz zwischen der Muttersprache und der Sprache im Einwanderungsland die wichtigste Determinante zur Erlangung von Sprachkenntnissen darstellt und ein großer Anteil der Heterogenität in der Sprachfähigkeit von Immigranten durch die linguistische Distanz zwischen der Sprache des Heimatlandes und des Gastlandes erklärt werden kann. Durch eine Erhöhung der linguistischen Distanz steigen der Schwierigkeitsgrad und damit verbunden auch die Kosten des Spracherwerbs. Dies hat zur Folge, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit, gute Sprachkenntnisse in der jeweiligen Landessprache zu besitzen, mit zunehmender linguistischer Distanz signifikant abnimmt
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