Macroeconomic Consequences of Ageing and Directed Technological Change. BertelsmannStiftung Studies

Macroeconomic Consequences of Ageing and Directed Technological Change Demographic projections foresee a pronounced population ageing process in the coming decades. The associated changes in quantity and quality of labour will have an impact on the long-term economic outlook. This study discusses economic implications of current demographic projections for a set of large industrialized economies, which include the largest member states of the EU, the USA and Japan, as well as Austria as an example of a small open economy. The focus of the study is the interplay between demographic and technological trends. The study extends the methodology of the European Commission’s Ageing Report by considering the effects of size and composition of the working-age population on the productivity growth and productivity effect of the ICT-intensity as a measure of directed technological change

Venture capital in bank - and market - based economies

The determinants of venture capital investment have attracted a significant amount of attention from both academics and policymakers. We use a version of the Keuschnigg-Nielsen model for venture-capital-financed projects to condition our analysis on a reasonable set of exogenous variables but we focus on one determinant : financial market structure. The type of financial market structure (bank -or market-based) contributes substantially to explaining differences among countries with respect to the extent of venture capital investments in the initial business stages. We will use the cross country and time series variation from a panel of 19 industrial countries to support the hypothesis that venture capital thrives within market-based financial systems and is confined to an ancillary role in bank-based systems.Venture capital, financial market structure, local stock markets, panel data.

Classification of graph C*-algebras with no more than four primitive ideals

We describe the status quo of the classification problem of graph C*-algebras with four primitive ideals or less

Public Export Guarantees and Foreign Trade Structure

Inter-industry trade and foreign trade are usually not based on cash transactions; rather sales on credit are the rule. The resulting monitoring costs for lenders and the risk of default on accounts receivable form an additional part of transaction costs in trade. Export credit certainly faces higher transaction costs due to differences in language, business practice, jurisdiction, and payment enforceability between trading partners. Export credit insurance has long been a domain of public export credit agencies, but since the beginning of the 1980's private insurance is gaining ground. Using disaggregated panel data for goods exports from Austria, we show that public export guarantees have a more than proportional positive impact on trade volumes. Export guarantees predominantly affect the country structure of foreign trade, but leave the industry specialization almost constant

Export Credit Guarantees and Export Performance: Evidence from Austrian Firm-level Data

This paper provides an economic assessment of export credit guarantee commitments by the Austrian export credit agency, using firm-level data on a cross-section of 178 Austrian exporting firms for the year 2008. In a first step, we estimate the relative importance of various determinants of export guarantee usage. Results suggest that the most crucial determinants are: firm size, whether or not the firm is part of a multinational enterprise, exposure to revenue risk, and R&D intensity. In a second step, we investigate the effects of export guarantees on export performance. Identification is achieved by using as instruments the exogenous determinants of export guarantee usage identified in the first step. We find that there are economically and statistically significant effects of export credit guarantee usage on firm-specific export performance ranging from some 80 to 100 percent compared with the control group of non-users

Regional Differences in Unemployment and the Labor Supply Decision

We present a model that describes the labor supply decision of individuals under transaction costs and job-related amenities. The model indicates that individuals will respond to regional differences in wages net of transaction costs and accept higher jobamenities as compensation for low wages. We use a sample of regional data from Eastern Austria to proof the implications of the model. Controlling for demand side effects we can find that the major determinants of regional differences in unemployment rates are wages differentials between districts, the share of public housing, and the sectoral structure of the district's economy. We can identify regional amenities indirectly by using a spatial filter on regional variables and interpret the regional component of the unemployment rate as unobserved amenities

The hepta-β-glucoside elicitor-binding proteins from legumes represent a putative receptor family

The ability of legumes to recognize and respond to β-glucan elicitors by synthesizing phytoalexins is consistent with the existence of a membrane-bound β-glucan-binding site. Related proteins of approximately 75 kDa and the corresponding mRNAs were detected in various species of legumes which respond to beta-glucans. The cDNAs for the beta-glucan-binding proteins of bean and soybean were cloned. The deduced 75-kDa proteins are predominantly hydrophilic and constitute a unique class of glucan-binding proteins with no currently recognizable functional domains. Heterologous expression of the soybean beta-glucan-binding protein in tomato cells resulted in the generation of a high-affinity binding site for the elicitor-active hepta-β-glucoside conjugate (K-d = 4.5 nM). Ligand competition experiments with the recombinant binding sites demonstrated similar ligand specificities when compared with soybean. In both soybean and transgenic tomato, membrane-bound, active forms of the glucan-binding proteins coexist with immunologically detectable, soluble but inactive forms of the proteins. Reconstitution of a soluble protein fraction into lipid vesicles regained beta-glucoside-binding activity but with lower affinity (K-d = 130 nM). We conclude that the beta-glucan elicitor receptors of legumes are composed of the 75 kDa glucan-binding proteins as the critical components for ligand-recognition, and of an as yet unknown membrane anchor constituting the plasma membrane-associated receptor complex

The Transition to the Single Market in the German Insurance Industry

The Single Market Project of the European Commission was supposed to change the financial service industry markedly. We provide a first attempt to assess its consequences on the insurance industry in Germany, the largest insurance market within the European Union. For this purpose we apply a Data Envelopment Analysis on a panel of German insurance companies and compute efficiency scores for the years 1992 through 1996 as well as a Malmquist index for the productivity growth. The results indicate cost saving potentials and an increasing divergence between fully efficient firms and efficiency laggards. Measured scale economies imply an L-shaped average cost curve for the industry and thus low cost saving potential from further merging activities

Measuring and Testing Complementarity and Co-evolution in Financial Systems

The distinction between bank- and market-based economies has a long tradition in applied macroeconomics. The two types of financial architecture differ not only with respect to the amount of funds channelled through private banking versus the capital market but with respect to several other characteristics, suggesting a competitive rather than a complementary relation between bank- and market-based institutions. Following the idea of Song and Thakor (2010) we test for the hypothesis that the efficiency of financial systems increases for more balanced financial systems, featuring both kinds of institutions in equal measure. We compute an index of complementarity and relate this index and other variables representing various feedback channels of co-evolution to measures for the efficiency of credit and capital markets in a panel of industrial countries