77 research outputs found
Would a Flat Tax Stimulate Entrepreneurship in Germany?: A Behavioural Microsimulation Analysis Allowing for Risk
Public health insurance and entry into self-employment
We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus
self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate
into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is
mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the selfemployed, who usually
buy private health insurance. Private health insurance contributions are
relatively low for the young and healthy, and until 2013 also for males, but
less attractive at the other ends of these dimensions and if membership in the
public health insurance allows other family members to be covered by
contribution-free family insurance. Therefore, the health insurance system can
create incentives or disincentives to starting up a business depending on the
family’s situation and health. We estimate a discrete time hazard rate model
of entrepreneurial entry based on representative household panel data for
Germany, which include personal health information, and we account for non-
random sample selection. We estimate that an increase in the health insurance
cost differential between self-employed workers and paid employees by 100 euro
per month decreases the annual probability of entry into selfemployment by
0.38 percentage points, i.e. about a third of the average annual entry rate.
The results show that the phenomenon of entrepreneurship lock, which an
emerging literature describes for the system of employer provided health
insurance in the USA, can also occur in a public health insurance system.
Therefore, entrepreneurial activity should be taken into account when
discussing potential health care reforms, not only in the USA and in Germany
The Private Equity Premium Puzzle Revisited: New Evidence on the Role of Heterogeneous Risk Attitudes
The Iceland Microcontinent and a continental Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge
The breakup of Laurasia to form the Northeast Atlantic Realm was the culmination of a long period of tectonic unrest extending back to the Late Palaeozoic. Breakup was prolonged and complex and disintegrated an inhomogeneous collage of cratons sutured by cross-cutting orogens. Volcanic rifted margins formed, which are blanketed by lavas and underlain variously by magma-inflated, extended continental crust and mafic high-velocity lower crust of ambiguous and probably partly continental provenance. New rifts formed by diachronous propagation along old zones of weakness. North of the Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge the newly forming rift propagated south along the Caledonian suture. South of the Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge it propagated north through the North Atlantic Craton along an axis displaced ~ 150 km to the west of the northern rift. Both propagators stalled where the confluence of the Nagssugtoqidian and Caledonian orogens formed a transverse barrier. Thereafter, the ~ 400-km-wide latitudinal zone between the stalled rift tips extended in a distributed, unstable manner along multiple axes of extension that frequently migrated or jumped laterally with shearing occurring between them in diffuse transfer zones. This style of deformation continues to the present day. It is the surface expression of underlying magma-assisted stretching of ductile mid- and lower continental crust which comprises the Icelandic-type lower crust that underlies the Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge. This, and probably also one or more full-crustal-thickness microcontinents incorporated in the Ridge, are capped by surface lavas. The Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge thus has a similar structure to some zones of seaward-dipping reflectors. The contemporaneous melt layer corresponds to the 3–10 km thick Icelandic-type upper crust plus magma emplaced in the ~ 10–30-km-thick Icelandic-type lower crust. This model can account for seismic and gravity data that are inconsistent with a gabbroic composition for Icelandic-type lower crust, and petrological data that show no reasonable temperature or source composition could generate the full ~ 40-km thickness of Icelandic-type crust observed. Numerical modeling confirms that extension of the continental crust can continue for many tens of Myr by lower-crustal flow from beneath the adjacent continents. Petrological estimates of the maximum potential temperature of the source of Icelandic lavas are up to 1450 °C, no more than ~ 100 °C hotter than MORB source. The geochemistry is compatible with a source comprising hydrous peridotite/pyroxenite with a component of continental mid- and lower crust. The fusible petrology, high source volatile contents, and frequent formation of new rifts can account for the true ~ 15–20 km melt thickness at the moderate temperatures observed. A continuous swathe of magma-inflated continental material beneath the 1200-km-wide Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Ridge implies that full continental breakup has not yet occurred at this latitude. Ongoing tectonic instability on the Ridge is manifest in long-term tectonic disequilibrium on the adjacent rifted margins and on the Reykjanes Ridge, where southerly migrating propagators that initiate at Iceland are associated with diachronous swathes of unusually thick oceanic crust. Magmatic volumes in the NE Atlantic Realm have likely been overestimated and the concept of a monogenetic North Atlantic Igneous Province needs to be reappraised. A model of complex, piecemeal breakup controlled by pre-existing structures that produces anomalous volcanism at barriers to rift propagation and distributes continental material in the growing oceans fits other oceanic regions including the Davis Strait and the South Atlantic and West Indian oceans
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