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on Microeconomic European Issues |
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Issue of 2020‒08‒31
twenty-one papers chosen by Giuseppe Marotta Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia |
| By: | Bertsch, Valentin; Di Cosmo, Valeria |
| Abstract: | The European Union has set ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy to meet emission reduction goals. After a period of subsidy-driven investments, the costs of renewables decreased strongly and renewable support schemes shift towards more market-based approaches. We therefore analyse the market-based profitability of wind onshore and offshore and solar PV across Europe to determine where it is optimal to invest and understand which factors drive the profitability of investments. We use a power systems model to simulate the whole European electricity market in 2030. Using the renewables’ revenues determined by the model, we calculate the profitability of each technology in each country. We also analyse how effective renewables are in terms of emission reduction. Investments are found not to be homogeneously profitable across Europe, i.e. cooperation between European countries can be expected to achieve the overall targets at lower costs than nationally-driven approaches. We also find that in many countries, wind onshore and solar PV are profitable by 2030 in absence of any financial support, whereas wind offshore does never seem profitable without support. Finally, RES expansion alone will not guarantee an effective reduction of CO2 emissions. |
| Keywords: | Renewable Energy; Renewable Energy Target; Renewable Electricity Target; EU Electricity Market; Profitability; Emission Reduction; Carbon Price; Carbon Price Floor |
| JEL: | Q42 Q52 Q58 |
| Date: | 2020–07–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:101822&r=all |
| By: | Rienzo, Cinzia |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first attempt to analyse the effect of the Brexit Referendum results on subjective well-being of immigrants living in the UK. Using the national representative UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society) data and adopting a difference-in-differences estimates, we define natives as control group, and different sub-groups of immigrants as treatment groups. The current analysis suggests that following the EU Referendum Results Non-EU migrants experienced an improvement in both mental health and life satisfaction relative to the UK natives. The results are robust to several robustness checks. Among others, we account for unobserved individual fixed effects and for unbalanced panel data. The results are consistent with the idea that the end of free movement for EU immigrants has alleviated the sense of discrimination and frustration felt by Non-EU immigrants results mainly of the toughened visa restrictions enforced since 2010 by the UK Government. |
| Keywords: | immigration,Subjective Wellbeing,Brexit |
| JEL: | O15 J61 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:586&r=all |
| By: | Lisa Taruttis; Christoph Weber (Chair for Management Sciences and Energy Economics, University of Duisburg-Essen (Campus Essen)) |
| Abstract: | The German government aims at a climate-neutral building stock by 2050 to reach the goals defined in the Climate Action Plan 2050. Increasing the energy efficiency of existing buildings is therefore a high priority. For this purpose, investments of private homeowners will play a major role since about 46.5% of the German dwellings are owner-occupied. To identify potential monetary benefits of investing in energetic retrofits, we investigate whether energy efficiency is reflected in property values of single-family houses in Germany. Thereby we examine possible heterogeneous effects among regions. With 455,413 individual observations on a 1km²-grid level for 2014 to 2018, this study adds to the literature 1) by examining the effect of energy efficiency on housing values for Germany on a more small-scale level and specifically investigating regional disparities in this context and 2) by estimating an energy efficiency value-to-cost ratio. Applying a hedonic analysis, we find a positive relationship between energy efficiency and asking prices. We also find evidence for regional disparities. Effects are significantly weaker in large cities compared to other urban areas, whereas the impact in rural areas is much stronger. Since property values are expected to decline in rural regions, homeowners could alleviate this development by increasing the energy efficiency of their dwellings. |
| Keywords: | Energy efficiency, residential buildings, regional disparities, German housing market, hedonic analysis, housing value |
| JEL: | C31 Q40 R21 R31 |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dui:wpaper:2004&r=all |
| By: | Deole, Sumit; Huang, Yue |
| Abstract: | We apply difference-in-differences regressions to study the impact of the 2015 refugee crisis in Germany on the culturally closer diaspora of existing immigrants originating from Turkey and Middle- Eastern and North-African countries (TMENA). Our identification allows us to emphasize the role of immigrants’ culture in estimating immigration’s socio-economic impact. Additionally, we distinguish between the labor demand and labor supply effects associated with immigration, which enables us to reflect on the ambiguous labor market impact of immigration suggested in the existing literature. In particular, we find that TMENA immigrants experienced a substantial reduction in unemployment in 2015, consistent with the differential demand shock induced by refugees’ consumption of culturally similar goods and services. However, the unemployment effects dissipated starting in 2016, coinciding with refugees’ delayed yet incremental labor market integration. We also consider the social impact of the refugee crisis and find that while worries about immigration increased among all respondents, the increases were statistically significantly smaller among TMENA immigrants, primarily due to their cultural proximity to arriving refugees. Our results suggest that TMENA immigrants’ assimilation of German identity was unaffected by the refugee crisis. |
| Keywords: | European refugee crisis,existing immigrants,socio-economic assimilation |
| JEL: | F22 J15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:579&r=all |
| By: | Roberto Iacono; Elisa Palagi |
| Abstract: | As far as standard measures of income inequality are concerned, the Nordic countries rank among the most equal economies in the world. This paper studies whether and how this picture changes when the focus is on inequality of income composition, meaning the heterogeneity in individuals’ factor income shares. We highlight the structural change taking place in all the Nordic countries since the early 1990s, with rising inequality in composition of individual incomes due mostly to a shift in capital incomes towards the top of the distribution. We link this result to changes in taxation of factor incomes, by highlighting the role played by the introduction of Dual Income Taxation reforms in the 1990s throughout the Nordic countries. Our estimates of the degree of income composition inequality allow a descriptive analysis of the role of functional distribution as a determinant of personal income inequality in the Nordics. We show that for Denmark in the period 2009 - 2013, Finland 1990 - 2007, and Norway 1991 - 2005, rising capital shares of income contributed to changes in personal income inequality, whilst for Sweden the evidence leads to disregard the capital share as a determinant of income inequality. |
| JEL: | D33 D63 E25 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lis:liswps:791&r=all |
| By: | Milena Lopreite; Pietro Panzarasa; Michelangelo Puliga; Massimo Riccaboni |
| Abstract: | We analyze social network data from Twitter to uncover early-warning signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe in the winter season 2020, before the first public announcements of local sources of infection were made. We show evidence that unexpected levels of concerns about cases of pneumonia were raised across a number of European countries. Whistleblowing came primarily from the geographical regions that eventually turned out to be the key breeding grounds for infections. These findings point to the urgency of setting up an integrated digital surveillance system in which social media can help geo-localize chains of contagion that would otherwise proliferate almost completely undetected. |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2008.02649&r=all |
| By: | Alessio Tomelleri (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management, Italy) |
| Abstract: | Using tax-based longitudinal microdata from 1985 to 2016, I document how the widening income distribution in Italy is driven by younger cohorts. Entry wages started to decrease around the mid-1990s, at the same time returns to experience of new entrants in the labour market declined. Falling wage growth is linked to the institutional changes that occurred in the Italian labour market in the decade across the 2000s. I examine the impact of Italian labour market reforms on cohort-specific wage inequality by looking at the relationship between the number of temporary job spells and individual earnings. Results confirm that young and high-skilled new entrants show higher wage differential in comparison to older workers and that the increase in temporary jobs is a crucial factor in explaining the cohort wage gap. |
| Keywords: | Income inequality; Cohort analysis; Labour market institutions |
| JEL: | J31 J41 |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps71&r=all |
| By: | Auer, Daniel; Tetlow, Daniel |
| Abstract: | Brexit - the United Kingdom leaving the European Union - continues to create an unpredictable social and political landscape. Uncertainty and perceptions are influential drivers when it comes to migration decisions, and yet, the literature's inference typically relies on individual-level data. This leaves the possibility of unobserved confounding factors being simultaneously associated with uncertainty perceptions. We leverage the British referendum of 2016 to leave the European Union as a unique natural experiment to demonstrate how collective uncertainty, induced by national government policy, affects the migratory behaviour of the citizens of an entire nation. Using official bilateral migration statistics, we highlight a substantial increase in migration flows from the UK to the remaining EU/EFTA countries. Exceptional spikes in naturalisation figures further indicate that UK-immigrants already living in other EU member states are actively taking decisions to mitigate the negative impact Brexit can have on their lives and livelihoods. We analyse encompassing interview data conducted among UK-immigrants in Germany to show that uncertainty about future bilateral relations and concerns about a negative economic outlook and social consequences in the UK, have been by far the most important driver of migration and naturalisation decisions in the post-referendum period. |
| Keywords: | Migration Decisions,Uncertainty,Subjective Beliefs,Risk preferences,Brexit,Migrationsentscheidungen,Unsicherheit,Subjektive Wahrnehmungen,Risikopräferenz,Brexit |
| JEL: | F22 D80 D81 J61 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmit:spvi2020102&r=all |
| By: | Wolff, Stefanie (E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN)); Madlener, Reinhard (E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN)) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we spatially map the willingness to pay for e-vehicle charging options according to the availability of public charging spots. We combine a Discrete Choice Experiment on charging preferences with a data set of public charging spots. Our results show spatial heterogeneity, i.e. respondents’ choices depend on the quantity of public charging spots available to them. Non-availability of public charging spots in the vicinity has a larger effect on the choice probability than 1, 2, or 3 charging spots have. This could be evidence for charging infrastructure awareness. For the charging locations, we find marked spatial heterogeneity in the willingness to pay subject to the number of available public charging spots. The interaction of charging location with the number of public charging spots reveals a strong preference for charging at home rather than at work or charging on the road. However, with every additional public charging spot, respondents are more likely to charge away from home. This holds until the number of charging spots has reached a tipping point at which respondents become indifferent between home and work charging. When the tipping point is exceeded, respondents rather charge at work than at home. Thus, with increasing numbers of charging spots, public chargers near home are less relevant than those near work. Eventually, public chargers away from home become more attractive. Also, with increasing numbers of charging spots our results reveal a fivefold greater willingness to pay for reducing waiting time (for a charging spot to become available) than for accelerating charging speed. Thus, charging point operators could surcharge by implementing a booking scheme than by implementing fast-charging. From the findings, we derive further implications for charging infrastructure policy, business models, and infrastructure planning, e.g. regarding the expected break-even points for rolling out charging infrastructure and the provision of green energy. |
| Keywords: | Electric mobility charging behavior; Charging spot awareness; Discrete Choice Experiment; Econometric modeling; Willingness to pay; Germany |
| JEL: | C25 D12 M38 Q58 R40 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:fcnwpa:2020_009&r=all |
| By: | Emanuele Bracco (University of Verona and Lancaster University); Maria De Paola (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF, Università della Calabria); Colin Green (University of Science and Technology, Norway); Vincenzo Scoppa (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF, Università della Calabria) |
| Abstract: | There has been a resurgence in right wing and populist politics in recent years. A common element is a focus on immigration, an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the vilification of minorities. This in turn has the potential to lead to increases in societal hostility towards immigrants. Children are likely to find themselves at the frontline of this phenomenon. This paper uses census data on two cohorts of 5th grade Italian students to estimate the causal effect of anti-immigration politics on school bullying. We use variations in the timing of municipal elections in Italy and focus on the effect of Lega Nord, a far-right party, with a strong anti-immigration platform. We demonstrate that in municipalities where elections occur and Lega Nord is highly active, the victimisation of immigrant school children increases. These effects are large, while they are absent for municipalities in which Lega Nord has little support, where no elections occurred and for native children. These findings are robust to different definitions of bullying outcomes or different definitions of Lega Nord presence. Our results suggest important negative spillovers from the political sphere to the welfare of children that are likely to be consequential. |
| Keywords: | Bullying, Bullying Victimisation, School, Immigration, Politics, Elections |
| JEL: | J15 J13 D72 I21 I24 |
| Date: | 2020–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:202005&r=all |
| By: | Ana I. Moro Egido (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada.); Maria Navarro (Departament of Applied Economics, University of Granada.) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of the degree of urbanization on child material deprivation by region in Spain. Using the EU-SILC 2009 and 2014 special module on material deprivation, we find that living in a city or town, with respect to a village, increases child material deprivation to a larger extent than household material deprivation and income. The effect of income becomes larger only among households with the largest deprivation (top quintile). Differentiating by needs, children’s basic needs provision does not respond to household material deprivation, income or degree of urbanization, whereas educational/leisure needs provision does. Finally, our results support the idea that regions with sufficiently high densely populated areas increase children’s material deprivation. Our findings might be of help for politicians and policymakers to design more effective policies intended to alleviate the incidence of child material deprivation that go beyond incomerelated programs. |
| Keywords: | Child and household material deprivation, hierarchical data, degree of urbanization, regional disparities. |
| JEL: | C30 I32 R20 |
| Date: | 2020–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gra:wpaper:20/06&r=all |
| By: | Piera Bello (Istituto di economia politica (IDEP), Facoltà di scienze economiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the effects of driving on air quality and road safety by exploiting exogenous variation in traffic flows associated with the Swiss franc’s appreciation. During the Swiss franc’s appreciation, the volume of cars crossing the Swiss-Italian border rose considerably– the higher purchasing power of Swiss francs in the Euro area induced more Italian workers to cross the border daily to work in Switzerland and increased the propensity for Swiss consumers to shop abroad (Bello, 2019). By using hourly data on traffic flows, road accidents, and air pollution, I show that the higher mobility across the border increased the concentration of oxides of nitrogen at peak hours during working days and the risk of road traffic accidents with personal injuries at late morning on non-working days. The elasticity to the the number of cars of both variables of interest turns out to be larger than 1, providing evidence of a harmful externality. This suggests the need for programmes that treat traffic congestion, air quality, and road safety jointly. Moreover, the existence of an externality has important implications for optimal road use pricing. |
| Keywords: | safety and accidents, air pollution, traffic, geographic labor mobility, cross-border shopping, exchange rate |
| JEL: | Q53 R41 J61 D12 |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lug:wpidep:2001&r=all |
| By: | Maite Blázquez (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.); Ana I. Moro Egido (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada.) |
| Abstract: | Using the EU-SILC 2008 module on over-indebtedness and financial exclusion, this paper analyses how perceived future-orientated economic insecurity alters individual subjective well-being measured as self-assessed health, once controlling for past and current financial situation in a range of European countries. Those effects differ by gender and by country. Our results also support the hypothesis suggesting that country characteristics explain a larger part of the unknown variability of individual levels of SAH than individual-household characteristics. Thus, our findings might be of help for politicians and policymakers in designing the most effective policies intended to alleviate the individual welfare costs of perceived financial insecurity provoked by upcoming business-cycle downturns, like the current COVID-19-triggered economic slowdown. |
| Keywords: | Financial insecurity, cross country differences, multilevel techniques. |
| JEL: | C29 I31 |
| Date: | 2020–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gra:wpaper:20/07&r=all |
| By: | Isphording, Ingo E. (IZA); Pestel, Nico (IZA) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of COVID-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the concentration of particulate matter (PM10) and ozone (O3). We apply fixed effects regressions controlling for global time-varying confounding factors and regional time-invariant confounding factors on the county level, as well as potentially confounding weather conditions and the regional stage of the pandemic. We find significant positive effects of PM10 concentration after the onset of the illness on COVID-19 deaths specifically for elderly patients (80+ years): higher levels of air pollution by one standard deviation 3 to 12 days after developing symptoms increase deaths by 30 percent (males) and 35 percent (females) of the mean. In addition, air pollution raises the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19. The timing of results supports mechanisms of air pollution affecting the severity of already realized infections. Air pollution appears not to affect the probability of infection itself. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, health, air pollution, Germany |
| JEL: | I12 I18 Q53 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13418&r=all |
| By: | Danzer, Alexander M. (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt); Feuerbaum, Carsten (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt); Gaessler, Fabian (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition) |
| Abstract: | While economic theory suggests substitutability between labor and capital, little evidence exists regarding the causal effect of labor supply on inventing labor-saving technologies. We analyze the impact of exogenous changes in regional labor supply on automation innovation by exploiting an immigrant placement policy in Germany during the 1990s and 2000s. Difference-in-differences estimates indicate that one additional worker per 1,000 manual and unskilled workers reduces automation innovation by 0.05 patents. The effect is most pronounced two years after immigration and confined to industries containing many low-skilled workers. Labor market tightness and external demand are plausible mechanisms for the labor-innovation nexus. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, automation, innovation, patents, labor market tightness, quasiexperiment |
| JEL: | O31 O33 J61 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13429&r=all |
| By: | d'Agostino, Giorgio; Patriarca, Fabrizio; Pieroni, Luca; Scarlato, Margherita |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the wage effects of a tax credit policy on new hirings in Southern Italy. We use high-quality administrative data and propose a latent class inverse probability weighting method as a strategy to account for workers' unobserved heterogeneity. We find an unexpected negative effect of the tax cut on the wages of treated workers, which is more marked for women. Our results also provide new insights on the job-segregation dimension of the gender gap. We provide a theoretical model with worker and firm fixed effects to analyse the impact of employer tax cuts as a place-based policy in lagging regions. |
| Keywords: | Regional disparities, place-based policies, hiring credits, wage differentials, gender segregation. |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J38 J42 R58 |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:102240&r=all |
| By: | Clara Toledano (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | Business cycle dynamics can shape the wealth distribution through asset price changes, saving responses, or a combination of both. This paper studies the implications of housing booms and busts for wealth inequality, examining two episodes over the last four decades in Spain. I combine fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts to reconstruct the entire wealth distribution and develop a new asset-specific decomposition of wealth ac- cumulation to disentangle the main forces behind wealth inequality dynamics (e.g., capital gains, saving rates). I find that the top 10% wealth share drops during housing booms, but the decreasing pattern reverts during busts. Differences in capital gains across wealth groups appear to be the main drivers of the decline in wealth concentration during booms. In contrast, persistent differences in saving rates across wealth groups and portfolio reshuf- fling towards financial assets among top wealth holders are the main explanatory forces behind the reverting evolution during housing busts. I show that the heterogeneity in saving responses is largely driven by differences in portfolio adjustment frictions across wealth groups and that tax incentives can exacerbate this differential behavior. Using a novel personal income and wealth tax panel, I explore the role of tax incentives exploiting quasi-experimental variation created by a large capital income tax reform in a differences- in-differences setting. I find that capital income tax cuts, largely benefiting top wealth holders, explain on average 60% of the increase in the top 10% wealth share during the re- cent housing bust. These results provide novel empirical evidence to enrich macroeconomic theories of wealth inequality over the business cycle. |
| Keywords: | Wealth distribution,wealth concentration,Spain,inequality,asset,housing,wealth tax |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:hal-02876979&r=all |
| By: | Bles, Per (RS: GSBE Theme Learning and Work, ROA / Education and occupational career); van der Velden, Rolf (RS: GSBE Theme Learning and Work, ROA / Education and occupational career); Ariës, Roel J. (RS: GSBE other - not theme-related research, ROA / Education and occupational career) |
| Abstract: | Schools in secondary education face a dilemma. On the one hand, they would like to offer all students opportunities to develop their talent, and on the other hand they want to safeguard a minimum performance level. In tracked systems, this dilemma becomes more consequential as misallocation of students could lead to either denying access to a more optimal track or to lower performance of students that are placed too high. Based on data from the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education (NCO) from 2010 to 2017, we find that only for 55% of schools there is a trade-off between opportunity and performance. These schools show a relative preference for either opportunity or performance. However, in the other schools, opportunity and performance are optimised at the same time; this dimension is related to the quality of the school. While controlling for the school’s potential student population, we show which school characteristics are associated with the relative preference and quality dimensions. |
| JEL: | I21 I22 |
| Date: | 2020–07–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umagsb:2020022&r=all |
| By: | Tomaso Duso; Claus Michelsen; Maximilian Schäfer; Kevin Ducbao Tran |
| Abstract: | Cities worldwide have regulated peer-to-peer short-term rental platforms claiming that those platforms remove apartments from the long-term housing market, causing an in- crease in rents. Establishing and quantifying such a causal link is, however, challenging. We investigate two policy changes in Berlin to first assess how effective they were in regulating Airbnb, the largest online peer-to-peer short-term rental platform. We document that the policy changes reduced the number of entire homes listed on Airbnb substantially, by eight to ten listings per square kilometer. In particular the introduction of limitations on the misuse of regular rental apartments as short-term accommodations, also strongly reduced the average number of days per year that Airbnb listings are available for booking. In a second step, we then use this policy-induced change in Airbnb supply to assess the impact of Airbnb on rents in the city. Our results suggest that each nearby apartment on Airbnb increases average monthly rents by at least seven cents per square meter. This effect is larger for Airbnb listings that are available for rent for a larger part of the year. Further analyses suggest some effect heterogeneity across the city. In particular, areas with lower Airbnb density tend to be affected more by additional Airbnb listings. |
| Keywords: | Rents, housing market, short-term rental regulation, sharing economy, Airbnb |
| JEL: | R21 R31 R52 Z30 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1890&r=all |
| By: | Piotr Paradowski; Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz; Eva Sierminska |
| Abstract: | We assess the impact of a new policy action in the form of cash child benefit introduced in Poland in 2016 (the program Family 500 +) on inequality and poverty. The analysis is based on micro-level household data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and Statistics Poland. We examine the changes in various indicators of inequality and poverty (Gini index, subjective and relative poverty rates) and their decomposition. We find evidence that the program substantially reduces inequality and poverty. This is confirmed by difference-in-difference estimation, in which treated and non-treated households are compared before and after the program’s introduction. |
| JEL: | I32 I38 G15 |
| Date: | 2020–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lis:liswps:799&r=all |
| By: | Ruhose, Jens; Thomsen, Stephan L.; Weilage, Insa |
| Abstract: | Adult education can mitigate the productivity decline in aging societies if older workers are willing to learn. We examine a generous partial retirement reform in Germany that led to a massive increase in early retirement. Using county-level administrative data on voluntary education activities, we employ a difference-in-differences approach for identification. The estimates show a strong increase in participation in adult education, specifically in cognitively demanding courses, for early retirees who would have continued working in the absence of the reform. This supports the notion of an intrinsic willingness of older individuals to acquire skills and abilities independent of financial incentives. |
| Keywords: | partial retirement,early retirement,older workers,adult education,generalized difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | J14 J24 J26 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:580&r=all |