Human Capital Externalities in Western Germany

The paper sheds light on the impact of spatial agglomeration of human capital on individual wages in Western Germany. Using panel data it shows that regional wage differentials are to a large extent attributable to localized human capital externalities arising from the regional share of highly qualified workers. Employing the regional number of public schools and of students as instrumental variables the paper shows that human capital externalities are underestimated in ordinary panel regressions for wages of highly qualified and non-highly qualified workers alike due to supply shifts of highly qualified workers. An analysis by sector reveals that human capital externalities are more pronounced in manufacturing than in the service sector. We find indication that highly qualified workers benefit from intra-industry knowledge spillovers, while non-highly qualified workers profit from pecuniary externalities between industries. Our findings are stable among a variety of indicators of regional human capital and robust to the inclusion of other sources of increasing returns, as well as wage curve, price level, and amenity effects.Human Capital Externalities, Agglomeration, Urban Wage Premium

Human Capital Externalities and the Urban Wage Premium: Two Literatures and their Interrelations

In this paper we survey the recent developments in two empirical literatures at the crossroads of labor and urban economics: Studies about localized human capital externalities (HCE) and about the urban wage premium (UWP). After surveying the methods and main results of each of these two literatures separately, we highlight several interrelations between them. In particular we ask if HCE can be interpreted as one fundamental cause of the UWP, and we discuss if one literature can conceptually learn from the methods that are used by the other one.local labor markets, agglomeration, human capital externalities, urban wage premium

Opportunities and Competition in Thick Labor Markets: Evidence from Plant Closures

Since Marshall (1890), it has been widely held in urban economic theory that cities insure workers against the risk of unemployment by offering a larger pool of potential jobs. Using a large administrative panel data set on workers displaced as a result of plant closures, we examine whether positive effects from a higher urban job density are offset by more intense competition between workers. When controlling for the sorting of workers between regions, we find robust evidence that the effect of job competition on unemployment duration exceeds that of job opportunities in absolute value. Our results put the idea of urban risk‐sharing into perspective and provide an explanation for observed longer unemployment durations in cities

Active Shielding for Future Large-Scale Dark Matter Experiments

This work presents two shielding concepts to reduce muon-induced and ambient background sources in future cryogenic dark matter experiments below 1 event/tonne/year: a water Cherenkov detector and a Gd-loaded liquid scintillator. Both veto systems were designed and optimized through GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations. In this context, an accurate model of the light collection in WCDs was implemented and validated via prototype measurements

Der schizophrene Schiffsschnabel: Biographie eines kolonialen Objektes und Diskurs um seine Rückforderung im postkolonialen München

In der deutschen Kolonialvergangenheit – oft marginalisiert und im Vergleich zur nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit noch wenig wahrgenommen – füllten sich die Völkerkundemuseen des Landes. Eine holzgeschnitzte, polychrome Bugspitze, der „tangue“, gelangte bei einer Strafexpedition aus dem Küstengebiet der Duala/Kamerun durch den späteren Direktor der Ethnographischen Sammlung Max Buchner nach München. Ein Enkel des ehemaligen Besitzers fordert das Objekt zurück. Barbara Heuermann folgt im ersten Teil der Arbeit der Biographie des Objektes und seinen Bedeutungszuschreibungen in den verschiedenen historischen, politischen und sozialen Kontexten von der Mitte des 19. Jhdt. bis heute. Der zweite Teil untersucht die Argumentation des Enkels Kum’a Ndumbe III. und seine Strategien innerhalb des Diskurses um die Rückgabe. Dabei erweist sich, dass ethnographische Daten für seine Beweisführung der Rechtmäßigkeit des Anspruchs sowohl verwendet, als auch verschwiegen, umgedeutet oder neu erfunden werden. Das Beispiel des „tangue“ zeigt, dass den Rückforderungen aus ehemaligen deutschen Kolonialgebieten nicht vorschnell und ohne eingehende Provenienzforschung nachgegeben werden sollte, denn auch Rückforderungen können ambivalenten Wünschen und Absichten unterliegen, persönliche Ambitionen einzelner Akteure eingeschlossen

Job Matching Efficiency in Skilled Regions: Evidence on the Microeconomic Foundations of Human Capital Externalities

Inspired by the literature on the role of local career networks for the quality of labour market matches we investigate whether human capital externalities arise from a higher job matching efficiency in skilled regions. Using two samples of workers in Germany we find that an increase in the regional share of highly qualified workers by one standard deviation is associated with between-job wage growth of about five per cent and with an increase in the annual probability of a job change of about sixty per cent. Wage gains are incurred only by workers changing jobs within industries. We find highly qualified workers in skilled regions to respond to these wage differentials by changing jobs more often within rather than between industries. Taken together, these findings suggest that human capital externalities partly arise because workers in skilled regions have better access to labour market information, which allows them to capitalize on their industry-specific knowledge when changing jobs

Catch crop mixtures have higher potential for nutrient carry-over than pure stands under changing environments

Winter catch crops are grown to scavenge nutrients over a period of unfavorable growth conditions and to conserve nutrients for subsequent release to the following main crop. Since environmental conditions have a strong impact on the growth and nutrient capture in roots and shoots of individual catch crop species, we anticipated that mixtures will be more durable and efficient in nutrient capture due to compensatory effects among component species. We tested this hypothesis and determined the nitrogen and phosphorus accumulation in the shoots and roots of four catch crop species grown in pure vs. mixed stands at two sites for two or three years. Element concentrations were determined in the root and shoot biomass of each species and used to calculate the nutrient pool fixed in the root or shoot biomass. A qPCR-based technique was applied to quantify the root biomass of individual species based on species-specific DNA sequences. Despite considerable variation across environments, the overall plant biomass of white mustard (Sinapis alba), lacy phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia) and bristle oat (Avena strigosa) was similar and higher than that of Egyptian clover (Trifolium alexandrinum). While pure stands varied 6- to 24-fold in shoot biomass depending on environmental conditions, the variation was only ~3-fold for catch crop mixtures, with less pronounced variation in the root biomass. In general, the root biomass was comparable to the shoot biomass in each species. Roots contributed 26–46% of the nitrogen and 36–48% of the phosphorus to the total accumulation of these nutrients in the catch crop biomass, thus emphasizing the importance of plant roots as belowground nutrient pool for potential carry-over of nutrients to the subsequent crop. Although the mixture was mostly dominated by two of the four species, namely mustard and phacelia, it captured similar or even larger amounts of nutrients than the best-performing pure stand under any growth condition. This was the case for shoot- and for root-bound nutrients. Our results indicate that catch crop mixtures have higher durability than pure cultures to environmental variations. The amount of nitrogen captured by the mixture meets the average postharvest nitrogen that is left over by a wide range of cash crops, thus emphasizing that catch crop mixtures represent an efficient nutrient management tool in crop rotations. © 202