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Gottvertrauen? Kirchenzugehörigkeit kann Wiederaufbau nach Naturkatastrophen verbessernFelix NothMitteldeutscher Rundfunk, 20. August 2025
Bürokratie und eine Verkleinerung des Staates sind schon seit Jahren in aller Munde. Bürokratieabbau war in den Wahlprogrammen aller deutschen Parteien zur letzten Bundestagswahl zu finden. Wenn Unternehmen gefragt werden, was sie davon abhält zu investieren, rangieren überbordende Bürokratie und Berichtspflichten zusammen mit Arbeitskräftemangel und hohen Energiekosten an erster Stelle.
Wissenschaft lebt vom Austausch kluger Köpfe über Grenzen hinweg. IWH-Ökonom Simon Wiederhold hat vier Wochen an der Stanford University geforscht. Einblicke in eine höchst anregende Erfahrung.
Die wirtschaftliche Transformation verändert die Arbeitswelt spürbar. Am IWH wird die Abteilung Strukturwandel und Produktivität diese Umbrüche künftig noch intensiver untersuchen und sich damit selbst verändern. Eine hochkarätige Konferenz nach besonderen Spielregeln gab dafür einen kräftigen Schub.
We study the effects of Tax Authority (IRS) attention on a firm’s financial reporting. We explore whether firms institute a higher degree of accounting conservatism in response to IRS monitoring. Using data on IRS acquisition of public firms’ 10-K financial disclosures to proxy for IRS attention, we find that when firms are under IRS attention, they tend to initiate higher levels of unconditional and, to some extent, conditional accounting conservatism. We alleviate some of the endogeneity concerns by using pre- and post-IRS attention environments between the treated group (firms with IRS attention) and a propensity score that matches the control group of firms (no IRS attention). These results withstand several robustness tests and subsample analyses.
Does information leakage in a target's social networks increase its stock price prior to a merger announcement? Evidence reveals that a target with more social connections indeed experiences a higher pre-announcement price run-up. This effect does not exist during or after the merger announcement, or in windows ending two months before the announcement. It is more pronounced among targets with severe asymmetric information, and weaker when the information about the upcoming merger is publicly available prior to the announcement. It is also weaker in expedited deals such as tender offers.
We examine how banks manage carbon transition risk by selling loans given to polluting borrowers to less regulated shadow banks in securitization markets. Exploiting the election of Donald Trump as an exogenous shock that reduces carbon risk, we find that banks’ securitization decisions are sensitive to borrowers’ carbon footprints. Banks are more likely to securitize brown loans when carbon risk is high but swiftly change to keep these loans on their balance sheets when carbon risk is reduced after Trump’s election. Importantly, securitization enables banks to offer lower interest rates to polluting borrowers but does not affect the supply of green loans. Our findings are more pronounced among domestic banks and banks that do not display green lending preferences. We discuss how securitization can weaken the effectiveness of bank climate policies through reducing banks’ incentives to price carbon risk.
We estimate the effects of worker voice on productivity, job quality, and separations. We study the 1991 introduction of a right to worker representation on boards or advisory councils in Finnish firms with at least 150 employees, designed primarily to facilitate workforce-management communication. Consistent with information sharing theories, our difference-in-differences design reveals that worker voice slightly raised labor productivity, firm survival, and capital intensity. In contrast to the exit-voice theory, we find no effects on voluntary job separations, and at most small positive effects on other measures of job quality. A 2008 introduction of shop-floor representation had similarly limited effects.
In this study, establishment-level employment effects of investment grants in Germany are estimated. In addition to the quantitative effects, I provide empirical evidence of funding effects on different aspects of employment quality (earnings, qualifications, and job security) for the period 2004 to 2020. The database combines project-level treatment data, establishment-level information on firm characteristics and employee structure, and regional information at the district-level. For the estimations, I combine the difference-in-differences approach of Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) with ties matching at the cohort level. The estimations yield positive effects on the number of employees, but point to contradicting effects of investment grants on different aspects of employment quality.
Research using historical data from Northern Ireland indicates that house prices are higher in more diverse neighbourhoods. Housing policy should focus on regenerating neighbourhoods, improving public services and fostering social integration.
Is there a multicultural neighborhood price premium? We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in British colonization patterns in Northern Ireland during the early 1600s which created neighborhoods of varying religious composition that persists until today. These religious groups are culturally distinct, but are observationally equivalent ethnically and socioeconomically. A standard deviation increase neighborhood-level multiculturalism raises house prices by 9.6%. Multiculturalism raises property prices by increasing asset liquidity and housing demand as a wider spectrum of society demand houses in these areas. The findings and mechanism contrast sharply with prior evidence showing negative relationships due to homophily, social networks, and identification challenges.
