Do Guns Displace Books? – The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment

Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital investments. Attending university, however, might open the possibility to avoid the draft, leading to an increase in the demand for tertiary education. To estimate the causal eff ect of conscription on the probability to obtain a university degree, we use a regression-discontinuity design that employs special regulations associated with the introduction of conscription in Germany in 1956. We estimate conscription to increase the probability of having a university degree.Regression discontinuity; conscription; career interruption; skill atrophy;TS2SLS

A Hybrid Evolutionary Search Concept for Data-based Generation of Relevant Fuzzy Rules in High Dimensional Spaces

In this paper we propose a hybrid fuzzy-evolutionary system for fuzzy modelling in high dimensional spaces. The system architecture is based on a Michigan-style approach (one individual represents one fuzzy rule). The design of the evolutionary algorithm makes use of a distance measure in the search space that in turn reflects some heuristic assumptions about the fitness landscape. Additionally, strategy parameters are dynamically adapted by means of a fuzzy controller. The approach is successfully applied to a complex benchmark problem as well as to several real-world modelling tasks such as the cancellation behaviour of insurance clients and the classification of automatic gearboxes

Proceedings. 22. Workshop Computational Intelligence, Dortmund, 6. - 7. Dezember 2012

Dieser Tagungsband enthält die Beiträge des 22. Workshops "Computational Intelligence" des Fachausschusses 5.14 der VDI/VDE-Gesellschaft für Mess- und Automatisierungstechnik (GMA) der vom 6. - 7. Dezember 2012 in Dortmund stattgefunden hat. Die Schwerpunkte sind Methoden, Anwendungen und Tools für - Fuzzy-Systeme, - Künstliche Neuronale Netze, - Evolutionäre Algorithmen und - Data-Mining-Verfahren sowie der Methodenvergleich anhand von industriellen Anwendungen und Benchmark-Problemen

Compulsory Military Service in Germany Revisited

This paper estimates the causal impact of compulsory military service on men in Germany using social security and pension administrative data for the cohort of individuals born in the period 1932–1942. Due to the combination of laws restricting conscription only to men born on or after July 1, 1937, difference-in-differences estimates of the effect of conscription on average daily wages can be computed using cohorts of women as a comparison group. The results indicate that conscription had no significant impact on a draftee’s labor-market performance, validating an earlier result using an alternative identification strategy.Conscription; difference in differences; German Federal Defense Force

Proceedings. 23. Workshop Computational Intelligence, Dortmund, 5. - 6. Dezember 2013

Dieser Tagungsband enthält die Beiträge des 23. Workshops Computational Intelligence des Fachausschusses 5.14 der VDI/VDE-Gesellschaft für Mess- und Automatisierungstechnik (GMA), der vom 5. - 6. Dezember 2013 in Dortmund stattgefunden hat. Im Fokus stehen Methoden, Anwendungen und Tools für Fuzzy-Systeme, Künstliche Neuronale Netze, Evolutionäre Algorithmen und Data-Mining-Verfahren

Proceedings. 26. Workshop Computational Intelligence, Dortmund, 24. - 25. November 2016

Dieser Tagungsband enthält die Beiträge des 26. Workshops Computational Intelligence. Die Schwerpunkte sind Methoden, Anwendungen und Tools für Fuzzy-Systeme, Künstliche Neuronale Netze, Evolutionäre Algorithmen und Data-Mining-Verfahren sowie der Methodenvergleich anhand von industriellen und Benchmark-Problemen

The European metropolitan region of Zurich - a cluster of economic clusters?

Switzerland is a small country and possesses only two or three major economic regions of a metropolitan character. From a Swiss perspective the most important region is the European Metropolitan Region of Zurich (EMRZ). The EMRZ covers the whole of the Zurich economic area as well as adjacent areas like Zug, Lucerne and Basel. In empirical terms the EMRZ shows an above average percentage share of manufacturing industries and advanced service companies. Although the EMRZ is recognised as the prime Swiss economic engine there is only vague perception about the locational situation of its more important industries such as pharmaceuticals, machinery, financial services and others. A true-type cluster analysis for the EMRZ is still lacking. This deficit of fundamental knowledge about the region seems all the more important since several economic promotion agencies market the greater Zurich economic area as a region with clusters in financial service industries and medical equipment. The paper thus presents in a first step the EMRZ delimitation using some selected statistical data which are put into relation with the whole of Switzerland. The emphasis of this analysis lies on the identification of the major manufacturing and service industries that are located within the EMRZ. Followed by a short overview of the different cluster theories and a working definition for an empirical cluster analysis. The next section produces a cluster analysis based on data from the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics. This results in the identification of major clusters, locational coefficients as well as a first glimpse at the interrelations between selected clusters. The paper finishes off with a hypothesis whether the spatial proximity of economic clusters in the case of the EMRZ bears any causality with its economic development. Key words: cluster analysis, European metropolitan region of Zurich, regional innovation system, spillovers