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on Microeconomic European Issues |
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Issue of 2019‒04‒22
23 papers chosen by Giuseppe Marotta Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia |
| By: | Thi Truong An Hoang; Andreas Knabe |
| Abstract: | We use nationally representative data from the UK Time-Use Survey 2014/2015 to investigate how a person’s employment status is related to time use and cognitive and affective dimensions of subjective well-being. We find that unemployed persons report substantially lower levels of life satisfaction than employed persons. When looking at specific types of activities, the unemployed enjoy most of the activities they engage in less than the employed. However, the employed consider working to be one of the least enjoyable activities. They also spend a large share of their time at work and with work-related activities, while the unemployed spend more time on leisure and more enjoyable activities instead. When looking at duration-weighted average affective well-being over the entire waking time of the day, our results suggest that the benefit of having to spend less time at work outweighs the negative emotional effect of unemployment during leisure episodes, such that the unemployed experience, on average, more enjoyment during the day than the employed. |
| Keywords: | unemployment, happiness, affective well-being, time use, Day Reconstruction Method |
| JEL: | I31 D91 J60 J22 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7581&r=all |
| By: | Roller, Christiane; Rulff, Christian; Tamminga, Michael M. |
| Abstract: | With increasing educational attainment in Germany, the issue of inefficient human capital allocation gains importance. Especially overeducation seems to be a problem, since more and more highly educated individuals are required to take jobs that do not match their educational level, settling for lower wages than their peers. This raises the question, how these individuals perform in these jobs and whether they have an advantage compared to their adequately educated colleagues performing the same job. The career mobility model suggests that this is indeed the case, with overeducated workers being more prone to take up on-the-job training, to climb up the career ladder, or to eventually leave to professions more suitable to their educational level. Our empirical analysis, using the German SOEP, confirms this theory for Germany. We find that overeducated workers have a significantly higher probability to take up on-the-job training than adequately educated workers and, at least in certain jobs, have a higher probability to move to jobs that better match their educational level. Furthermore, we find that overeducated workers experience higher wage growth than their colleagues in all job types. |
| Keywords: | education,educational mismatch,wages,job mobility,training |
| JEL: | J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:798&r=all |
| By: | Crowley, Frank; Walsh, Edel |
| Abstract: | Many argue that the rise in populist support in Europe and elsewhere stems from people feeling marginalised, distrustful and generally dissatisfied. Against a backdrop of populism, this paper aims to examine the relationship between social capital and life satisfaction using data on 21,000 individuals from 14 European countries obtained from the Life in Transition Survey (2016). Specifically, we test the empirical significance of a novel social capital-wellbeing conceptual framework that incorporates three key dimensions of personal social capital; (i) structural (personal ties), (ii) cognitive (trust) and (iii) tolerance. This latter aspect is the most novel addition of this research to the theoretical and empirical literature as we argue that tolerance acts as a bridging mechanism between trust and ties in affecting overall wellbeing. Using ordered probit models the paper estimates the effect of social capital on life satisfaction by using an index for aggregate personal social capital, as well as separate indices for structural social capital, cognitive social capital and tolerance. The analysis also examines the interaction effects of social capital with individual and place characteristics of respondents. Among the results we find that strong structural ties with friends and family and being a tolerant, trusting individual improves life satisfaction. Of the social capital indicators, we find that trust in institutions has the largest marginal effect on life satisfaction. Also, interaction effects indicate that social capital could be a key ingredient in overcoming income inequalities, health inequalities and spatial inequalities at the individual level. We conclude that societies that fail to invest in social capital may be more politically unstable or more susceptible to widespread intolerance, distrust and ultimately discontent. |
| Keywords: | life satisfaction,social capital,ties,trust,tolerance,Europe |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:srercw:srercwp20181&r=all |
| By: | OA Carboni; G. Medda |
| Abstract: | The outsourcing of R&D activities is considered an important way to acquire external technological information that can be integrated into a firm's own knowledge endowment. Given the complex relationship between R&D partnerships and innovation performance, it becomes of paramount importance for scholars, managers and policy-makers to understand whether and how outsourcing benefits the firm. This paper tries to assess the impact that external sources of R&D may have on product innovation, differentiating between R&D supplied by universities and other companies. The empirical analysis is based on a large and representative sample of European manufacturing companies. The analysis considers R&D an endogenous decision in investigating its effect on product innovation. An instrumental variable two-step estimation method is employed to deal with this issue. The results suggest that R&D intensity, or the share of R&D acquired from external sources, has a positive and significant effect on product innovation. Furthermore, we find evidence of an inverse U-shaped relationship between R&D outsourcing and innovation, meaning that on average, costs start to outweigh benefits as the R&D collaboration projects increase. We also estimate high returns from R&D acquired from universities on the probability to achieve product innovations, while having firms in the same group as research partners has the largest effect on innovative product sales. The results have straightforward implications for the practice of R&D managers. In order to gain advantages from partnership in research, innovation managers need to jointly exploit these different types of collaboration activities and their potential synergies. Given that the innovative firms in the sample desire additional credit which actually they do not obtain, R&D managers should also be concerned with the financing sources firms have access to. Finally, the analysis suggests that managers ought to identify the appropriate level of external acquisition in order to fully benefit on innovation. |
| Keywords: | External R&D;research partners;innovation performance;IV model |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:201906&r=all |
| By: | Hafner, Lucas |
| Abstract: | In this paper I evaluate a labor market reform in Germany. In particular, I analyze whether the introduction of the general minimum wage in 2015 had an effect on self-rated health and labor market outcomes of individuals who were likely affected by the reform. I exploit the plausibly exogenous variation in hourly wages induced by the natural policy experiment and apply difference-in-difference analysis combined with propensity score matching. I use survey-data combined with administrative records which enables me to control for a vast set of possibly confounding variables. I find on average significant improvements of self-rated health for individuals who are affected by the reform. My analysis indicates, that reduced stress, due to a significant reduction of weekly working hours potentially drives this result. |
| Keywords: | minimum wage,self-rated health,natural experiment |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwqwdp:022019&r=all |
| By: | Anna Aizer; Paul J. Devereux; Kjell G. Salvanes |
| Abstract: | Women who give birth as teens have worse subsequent educational and labor market outcomes than women who have first births at older ages. However, previous research has attributed much of these effects to selection rather than a causal effect of teen childbearing. Despite this, there are still reasons to believe that children of teen mothers may do worse as their mothers may be less mature, have fewer financial resources when the child is young, and may partner with fathers of lower quality. Using Norwegian register data, we compare outcomes of children of sisters who have first births at different ages. Our evidence suggests that the causal effect of being a child of a teen mother is much smaller than that implied by the cross-sectional differences but that there are still significant long-term, adverse consequences, especially for children born to the youngest teen mothers. Unlike previous research, we have information on fathers and find that negative selection of fathers of children born to teen mothers plays an important role in producing inferior child outcomes. These effects are particularly large for mothers from higher socio-economic groups. |
| Keywords: | Teen pregnancy; Intergenerational mobility; Family fixed effects |
| JEL: | J12 J13 I31 I32 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201908&r=all |
| By: | Mathä, Thomas Y.; Millard, Stephen; Rõõm, Tairi; Wintr, Ladislav; Wyszyńsk, Robert |
| Abstract: | We use firm-level survey data from 25 EU countries to analyse how firms adjust their labour costs (employment, wages and hours) in response to shocks. We develop a theoretical model to understand how firms choose between different ways to adjust their labour costs. The basic intuition is that firms choose the cheapest way to adjust labour costs. Our empirical findings are in line with the theoretical model and show that the pattern of adjustment is not much affected by the type of the shock (demand shock, access-to-finance shock, ‘availability of supplies’ shock), but differs according to the direction of the shock (positive or negative), its size and persistence. In 2010-13, firms responding to negative shocks were most likely to reduce employment, then hourly wages and then hours worked, regardless of the source of the shock. Results for the 2008-09 period indicate that the ranking might change during deep recession as the likelihood of wage cuts increases. In response to positive shocks in 2010-13, firms were more likely to increase wages, followed by increases in employment and then hours worked suggesting an asymmetric reaction to positive and negative shocks. Finally, we show that strict employment protection legislation and high centralisation or coordination of wage bargaining make it less likely that firms reduce wages when facing negative shocks. JEL Classification: D21, D22, D24 |
| Keywords: | employment, firms, hours, labour cost adjustment, Shocks, survey, wages |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20192269&r=all |
| By: | Maximilian Sprengholz; Anna Wieber; Elke Holst |
| Abstract: | We exploit the natural experiment of German reunification in 1990 to investigate if the institutional regimes of the formerly socialist (rather gender-equal) East Germany and the capitalist (rather gender-traditional) West Germany shaped different gender identity prescriptions of family breadwinning. We use data for three periods between 1984 and 2016 from the representative German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Density discontinuity tests and fixed-effects regressions suggest that married couples in West (but not East) Germany diminished the wife’s labor market outcomes in order to avoid situations where she would earn more than him. However, the significance of the male breadwinner prescription seems to decline in West Germany since reunification, converging to the more gender-egalitarian East Germany. Our work emphasizes the view that political and institutional frameworks can shape fairly persistent gender identity prescriptions that influence household economic decisions for some time, even when these frameworks change. |
| Keywords: | Gender identity, Male breadwinner norm, Institutions, Female labor market outcomes, SOEP |
| JEL: | J16 J12 D10 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1030&r=all |
| By: | Alfano, Vincenzo; D'Uva, Marcella; De Simone, Elina; Gaeta, Giuseppe Lucio |
| Abstract: | Finding a non-academic job in line with both doctoral graduates’ degree and acquired know-how can be difficult because of insufficient demand for R&D skills in public administration and private enterprise and/or because of the lack of matching between the existing demand and the Ph.D. holders’ specialization. The aim of this paper is to test whether migrating from some regions may improve job-education matching in Italy. The econometric strategy takes into account Ph.D. holders’ selfselection into non-academic employment as well as the endogeneity of the migration choice. Results demonstrate that migration seems to facilitate the possibility of finding better job opportunities. More specifically, only migration within the regions of the centre and north of Italy seems to improve jobeducation matching. |
| Keywords: | Ph.D. holders,job-education mismatch,migration |
| JEL: | J61 J24 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:340&r=all |
| By: | Falkingham, Jane; Giulietti, Corrado; Wahba, Jackline; Wang, Chuhong |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first attempt to study the causal impact of “Brexit”, namely the UK’s departure from the European Union (EU), on the post-graduation mobility decisions of EU students in the UK. We exploit the British government’s formal withdrawal notification under Article 50 as a natural experiment and employ a difference-in-differences design. Using data from a new survey of graduating international students, we find that EU graduating students are significantly more likely than non-EU graduating students to plan on leaving the UK upon graduation immediately after the announcement. Interestingly, results are especially driven by students from the new EU countries and students from the EU14 countries who are undecided of their migration plans. We further show that the deterrent effects are heterogeneous and depend on age and subject among others. These findings carry important implications for post-Brexit UK and for other European countries with emerging calls for their own referendums. |
| Keywords: | Brexit,Article 50,Higher education,International students,Intention to leave |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:342&r=all |
| By: | Becker, Sascha O. (University of Warwick); Fernandes, Ana (Bern University of Applied Sciences); Weichselbaumer, Doris (Johannes Kepler University Linz) |
| Abstract: | Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a largescale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-àvis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who have a higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Discrimination; Experimental economics. JEL Classification: C93; J16; J71. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:412&r=all |
| By: | James Alm (Tulane University); Yongzheng Liu (Renmin University of China); Kewei Zhang (Renmin University of China) |
| Abstract: | Most analyses of tax evasion examine individual behavior, not firm behavior, given obvious and recognized data issues. We use data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey to examine tax evasion at the firm level, focusing on a novel determinant of firm tax evasion: the financial constraints (or credit constraints) faced by the firm. Our empirical results indicate across a range of alternative specifications that more financially constrained firms are more likely to be involved in tax evasion activities, largely because evasion helps them deal with financing issues created by financial and credit constraints. We further show that the effects of financial constraints are heterogeneous across firm ownership, firm age, and firm size. Lastly, we present some suggestive evidence on the possible channels through which the impact of financial constraints on firm tax evasion may operate, including a reduction of information disclosure through the banking system, an increase in the use of cash for transactions, and an increase in bribe activities in exchange for tax evasion opportunities. |
| Keywords: | Tax evasion; financial constraints; firm-level data. |
| JEL: | E26 G2 H26 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:wpaper:1901&r=all |
| By: | Jamie Hentall MacCuish |
| Abstract: | I present evidence incorporating costly thought solves three puzzles in the retirement literature. The first puzzle is, given incentives, the extent of bunching of labour market exits at legislated state pension ages (SPA) seems incompatible with rational expectations. Adding to the evidence for this puzzle, I include an empirical analysis focusing on whether liquidity constraints can explain this bunching and find they cannot. The nature of this puzzle is clarified by exploring a life-cycle model with rational agents that matches aggregate profiles. This model succeeds in matching aggregates by overestimating the impact of the SPA on poorer individuals whilst underestimating its impact on wealthier people. The second puzzle is people are often mistaken about their own pension provisions. Concerning the second puzzle, I incorporate rational inattention to the SPA into the aforementioned life-cycle model, allowing for mistaken beliefs. To the best of my knowledge, this paper is the first not only to incorporate rational inattention into a life-cycle model but also to assess a rationally inattentive model against non-experimental individual choice data. This facilitates another important contribution: discipling the cost of attention with subjective belief data. Preliminary results indicate rational inattention improves the aggregate fit and better matches the response of participation to the SPA across the wealth distribution, hence offering a resolution to the first puzzle. The third puzzle is despite actuarially advantageous options to defer receipt of pension benefits, take up is extremely low. An extension of the model generates an explanation of this last puzzle: the actuarial calculations implying deferral is preferable ignore the utility cost of tracking your pension which can be avoided by claiming. These puzzles are researched in the context of the reform to the UK female SPA. |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1904.06520&r=all |
| By: | Benjamin Bittschi; Ines Fortin; Sebastian Koch; Richard Sellner; Simon Loretz (WIFO); Gregor Zwirn |
| Abstract: | The study estimates the tax revenue effects of changes in alcohol excise taxes for Spain, France and Poland. In addition to excise tax and VAT revenue effects, the price pass-through and the impact on market volumes is estimated. The main parameters – the tax pass-through rate of excise duties to consumer prices and the price elasticities of demand for alcoholic beverages – are estimated via state-of-the-art econometric approaches based a combination of household-levels and macro data. In a first step, the literature survey finds very diverse estimates for price elasticities of alcoholic beverages. We find evidence that excise taxes are typically fully passed onto consumer prices. Using micro data at the household level, we find price elasticities of demand for Spain, France and Poland which are higher (in absolute terms) than those typically found in the literature. This implies that price increases lead to larger drops in sales volume and, thus, tax increases might not result in the expected additional tax revenues. A macro level estimation of the relation between excise tax rates and revenues confirms a Laffer-curve type relationship, i.e., tax revenues cease to increase if excise tax rates reach a certain threshold level. The empirical evidence in this study suggests that the tax rates for beer and wine are well below this revenue maximising saddle point, but the evidence is inconclusive for spirits in the countries in question. Using the simulation tool developed in this study, it is found that a 1 percent increase in the excise tax rates of each alcoholic beverage prevailing in 2017 in each of the countries will have the strongest negative effect on the market volumes of spirits, while for beer and wine these increases translate to by and large higher collected tax revenues. Noteworthily, in some scenarios excise tax increases result in decreases in VAT revenues due to a significant reduction in the higher value on-trade sales. |
| Keywords: | alcoholic beverages, excise taxation, VAT, price elasticity |
| Date: | 2019–04–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wfo:wpaper:y:2019:i:579&r=all |
| By: | Pauline Affeldt |
| Abstract: | I study the predictability of the EC’s merger decision procedure before and after the 2004 merger policy reform based on a dataset covering all affected markets of mergers with an official decision documented by DG Comp between 1990 and 2014. Using the highly flexible, non-parametric random forest algorithm to predict DG Comp’s assessment of competitive concerns in markets affected by a merger, I find that the predictive performance of the random forests is much better than the performance of simple linear models. In particular, the random forests do much better in predicting the rare event of competitive concerns. Secondly, postreform, DG Comp seems to base its assessment on a more complex interaction of merger and market characteristics than pre-reform. The highly flexible random forest algorithm is able to detect these potentially complex interactions and, therefore, still allows for high prediction precision. |
| Keywords: | Merger policy reform, DG Competition, Prediction, Random Forests |
| JEL: | K21 L40 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1800&r=all |
| By: | Adermon, Adrian (Institute for Evaluation of Labor Market and Education Policy (IFAU), UCLS and UCFS); Lindahl, Mikael (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Palme, Mårten (Department of Economics, Stockholm University and IZA) |
| Abstract: | We study the importance of the extended family – the dynasty – for the persistence in inequality across generations. We use data including the entire Swedish population, linking four generations. This data structure enables us to identify parents’ siblings and cousins, their spouses, and the spouses’ siblings. Using various human capital measures, we show that traditional parent-child estimates of intergenerational persistence miss almost one-third of the persistence found at the dynasty level. To assess the importance of genetic links, we use a sample of adoptees. We then find that the importance of the extended family relative to the parents increases. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational mobility; extended family; dynasty; human capital |
| JEL: | I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0758&r=all |
| By: | Gareth Anderson (University of Oxford); Rebecca Riley (NIESR; Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM)); Garry Young (NIESR; Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM)) |
| Abstract: | Exploiting differences in pre-crisis business banking relationships, we present evidence to suggest that restricted credit availability following the 2008 financial crisis increased the rate of business failure in the United Kingdom. But rather than "cleansing" the economy by accelerating the exit of the least productive businesses, we find that tighter credit conditions resulted in some businesses failing despite being more productive than their surviving competitors. We also find evidence that distressed banks protected highly leveraged, low pro ductivity businesses from failure. |
| JEL: | D22 D24 G21 G30 L10 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfm:wpaper:1908&r=all |
| By: | Lucía Gorjón García; Antonio Villar |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of a Minimum Income Scheme (MIS), which operates in the Basque Country, one of the 17 Spanish Autonomous Regions, by assessing its efficacy in fighting poverty. We evaluate the effect or the MIS with respect to two different poverty measures. The first one is that defined by the administrative criteria of eligibility. The second one corresponds to Sen’s poverty measure that permits a simple decomposition of poverty into three different components, incidence, intensity and inequality. The results show that the MIS has reduced substantially all dimensions of poverty, even though there is scope for improvement both in coverage and efficiency. |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaeee:eee2019-10&r=all |
| By: | Stefania Basiglio (Faculty of Law, University of Trento, Italy); Mariacristina Rossi (Department of Management, University of Torino, Italy); Arthur van Soest (Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, Nederlands) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we investigate whether and to what extent inheritance expectations act as a driver of economic choices. We use the DHS dataset merged with a specific module on subjective probabilities on inheritance receiving and its amount foreseen in the next ten years. Hence, we analyze whether the expected inheritance acts as a deterrent to saving. Results suggest that individuals perceive the expected inheritances as a potential increase of personal wealth, which leads to a reduction in savings. Expectations appear to matter also in the enhancement of the intention to bequeath and in future work versus leisure choices. |
| Keywords: | Subjective expectations, Savings, Inheritance. |
| JEL: | D14 D84 D91 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:062&r=all |
| By: | Thomas Barnay; Emmanuel Duguet; Christine Le Clainche |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eru:erudwp:wp19-12&r=all |
| By: | Mathieu Couttenier (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Sophie Hatte (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Mathias Thoenig (UNIL - Université de Lausanne, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Stephanos Vlachos (University of Vienna [Vienna]) |
| Abstract: | We study how news coverage of immigrant criminality impacted municipality-level votes in the November 2009 "minaret ban" referendum in Switzerland. The campaign, successfully led by the populist Swiss People's Party, played aggressively on fears of Muslim immigration and linked Islam with terrorism and violence. We combine an exhaustive violent crime detection dataset with detailed information on crime coverage from 12 newspapers. The data allow us to quantify the extent of pre-vote media bias in the coverage of migrant criminality. We then estimate a theory-based voting equation in the cross-section of municipalities. Exploiting random variations in crime occurrences, we find a first-order, positive effect of news coverage on political support for the minaret ban. Counterfactual simulations show that, under a law forbidding newspapers to disclose a perpetrator's nationality, the vote in favor of the ban would have decreased by 5 percentage points (from 57.6% to 52.6%). |
| Keywords: | Media,Violent crime,Immigration,Vote,Populism |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02095658&r=all |
| By: | Renaud Bourlès (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales, AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Anastasia Cozarenco (CERMi - Centre for European Research in Microfinance, MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UM3 - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UM2 - Université Montpellier 2 - Sciences et Techniques - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School - UM - Université de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | This article examines the link between entrepreneurial motivation and business performance in the French microfinance context. Using hand-collected data on business microcredits from a Microfinance Institution (MFI), we provide an indirect measure of entrepreneurial success through loan repayment performance. Controlling for the endogeneity of entrepreneurial motivation in a bivariate probit model, we find that "necessity entrepreneurs" are more likely to have difficulty repaying their microcredits than "opportunity entrepreneurs". However, type of motivation does not appear to make a difference to business survival. We build a stylized model to develop formal arguments supporting this outcome. We test for the robustness of our results using parametric duration models, and show that necessity entrepreneurs experience difficulties in loan repayment earlier than their opportunity counterparts, corroborating our initial findings. |
| Keywords: | opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs,business microcredit,loan repayment,business survival |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01954474&r=all |
| By: | Mark Dijkstra (Utrecht University); Maarten Pieter Schinkel (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This paper shows how price leadership bans imposed, as part of the European Commission’ s State aid control, on all main mortgage providers but the largest bank shifted the Dutch mortgage market from a competitive to a collusive price leadership equilibrium. In May 2009, mortgage rates in The Netherlands suddenly rose against the decreasing funding cost trend to almost a full percentage point above the Eurozone average. We derive equilibrium best-response functions, identify the price leader, and estimate response adjustments in cointegrating equations on a large data set of daily mortgage rates 2004-2012. Consistent with the full coordination equilibrium, we find structural decreases in the leader’s cost pass-through and H-statistic, suggesting monopoly power, as well as much closer following of the leader’s price and strongly reduced transmission of common cost changes in to price followers mortgage rates. All the structural breaks are around the Spring of 2009, when the price leadership bans were negotiated. Predicted over charges are 125 basis points or 26% on average. |
| Keywords: | banking, competition, price leadership, collusion, State aid |
| JEL: | L11 G21 L85 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20190014&r=all |