Employment Pacts in Italy 1992 to 2002

Beschäftigungspolitik, Sozialpakt, Zeitgeschichte, Italien, Employment policy, Social pact, Contemporary history, Italy

Introducing Time-to-Educate in a Job Search Model

Transition patterns from school to work differ considerably across OECD countries. Some countries exhibit high youth unemployment rates, which can be considered an indicator of the difficulty facing young people trying to integrate into the labor market. At the same time, education is a time-consuming process, and enrolment and dropout decisions depend on expected duration of studies, as well as on job prospects with and without completed degrees. One way to model entry into the labor market is by means of job search models, where the job arrival hazard is a key parameter in capturing the ease or difficulty in finding a job. Standard models of job search and education assume that skills can be upgraded instantaneously (and mostly in the form of on-the-job training) at a fixed cost. This paper models education as a time-consuming process, a concept which we call time-to-educate, during which an individual faces the trade-off between continuing education and taking up a job.job search, education, enrollment, dropouts

What Drives the Relationship Between Inflation and Price Dispersion? Market Power vs. Price Rigidity

Recent monetary search and Calvo-type models predict that the relationship between inflation and price dispersion is U-shaped, implying an optimal rate of inflation above zero. Moreover, monetary search models emphasize a critical dependence of the real effects of inflation on sellers’ market power, whereas Calvotype models suggest that the degree of price rigidity significantly affects the inflation - price dispersion nexus. Using a new set of highly disaggregated sectoral price data from a panel of European countries, this paper contributes to the literature by testing the empirical relevance of these two theoretical predictions. In line with monetary search theory, a U-shaped profile is found, provided that markups are sufficiently high, but the relationship breaks down under a more competitive environment. Contrarily, no evidence is found to support the contentions of Calvo-type models: U-shaped effects of inflation occur in product sectors with sticky as well as highly flexible prices.Inflation, Relative price variability, Price level index, Euro-area, Market structure, Monetary search model, Dynamic panel data models

Does Parental Education Affect Fertility? Evidence from Pre-Demographic Transition Prussia

While  women’s  employment  opportunities,  relative  wages,  and  the child quantity quality trade-off have been studied as factors underlying historical fertility limitation, the role of parental education has received little  attention.  We  combine  Prussian  county  data  from  three censuses—1816,  1849,  and  1867—to  estimate  the  relationship between women’s education and their fertility before the demographic transition.  Despite  controlling  for  several  demand  and  supply  factors, we  find  a  negative  residual  effect  of  women’s  education  on  fertility. Instrumental variable estimates, using exogenous variation in women's education driven by differences in landownership inequality, suggest that the effect of women's education on fertility is casual.Demographic transition; female education; fertitility; Nineteenth Century Prussia

The political economy of the Prussian three-class franchise

How did the Prussian three-class franchise, which politically over-represented the economic elite, affect policies? Contrary to the predominant and simplistic view that the system allowed the landed elites to capture most political rents, we find that members of parliament from constituencies with a higher vote inequality support more liberal policies, gauging their political orientation from the universe of roll call votes cast in parliament during Prussia’s rapid industrialization (1867–1903). Consistent with the characteristics of German liberalism that aligned with economic interests of business, the link between vote inequality and liberal voting is stronger in regions with large-scale industry

Prussia disaggregated : the demography of its universe of localities in 1871

We provide, for the first time, a detailed and comprehensive overview of the demography of more than 50,000 towns, villages, and manors in 1871 Prussia. We study religion, literacy, fertility, and group segregation by location type (town, village, and manor). We find that Jews live predominantly in towns. Villages and manors are substantially segregated by denomination, whereas towns are less segregated. Yet, we find relatively lower levels of segregation by literacy. Regression analyses with county-fixed effects show that a larger share of Protestants is associated with higher literacy rates across all location types. A larger share of Jews relative to Catholics is not significantly associated with higher literacy in towns, but it is in villages and manors. Finally, a larger share of Jews is associated with lower fertility in towns, which is not explained by differences in literacy

Inflation, price dispersion and market integration through the lens of a monetary search model

Recent monetary search models emphasize that the real effects of inflation via its impact on price dispersion depend on the level of search costs and, thus, on the level of market integration. For less integrated markets, the inflation-price dispersion nexus is predicted to be asymmetrically V-shaped which implies an optimal inflation rate above zero. For highly integrated markets, however, theory suggests that the impact of inflation on price dispersion disappears. Employing price data of the European Union member states, this paper is the first that empirically tests these implications of monetary search theory. --Inflation,Relative price variability,Monetary search models,European market integration

Do Entrepreneurs Matter?

Publisher PD

International risk sharing in the short run and in the long run

Using a panel of 23 industrialised countries, the paper investigates how short-run and long-run income risks are shared and how the source of uncertainty matters for the way this risk gets insured. Surprisingly, short-term and long-term output risks are found to be equally well insured. Transitory shocks get smoothed almost completely whereas permanent shocks remain 80 percent uninsured. We find a somewhat more important role for international capital markets than earlier studies. Whereas our results tie in with some recent theoretical insights and are consistent with empirical findings on home bias in international portfolios, they raise the question why permanent shocks are so hard to insure internationally. Keywords; international consumption risk sharing, European integration, panel data, panel vector autoregressions