Mission, Motivation, and the Active Decision to Work for a Social Cause
Sabrina Jeworrek, Vanessa Mertins
Abstract
The mission of a job does not only affect the type of worker attracted to an organisation, but may also provide incentives to an existing workforce. We conducted a natural field experiment with 267 short-time workers and randomly allocated them to either a prosocial or a commercial job. Our data suggest that the mission of a job itself has a performance enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, i.e., workers with a prosocial attitude. However, the mission is very important if it has been actively selected. Those workers who have chosen to contribute to a social cause outperform the ones randomly assigned to the same job by about 15 percent. This effect seems to be a universal phenomenon which is not driven by information about the alternative job, the choice itself or a particular subgroup.
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Structural Interpretation of Vector Autoregressions with Incomplete Identification: Revisiting the Role of Oil Supply and Demand Shocks
Christiane Baumeister, James D. Hamilton
American Economic Review,
Nr. 5,
2019
Abstract
Traditional approaches to structural vector autoregressions (VARs) can be viewed as special cases of Bayesian inference arising from very strong prior beliefs. These methods can be generalized with a less restrictive formulation that incorporates uncertainty about the identifying assumptions themselves. We use this approach to revisit the importance of shocks to oil supply and demand. Supply disruptions turn out to be a bigger factor in historical oil price movements and inventory accumulation a smaller factor than implied by earlier estimates. Supply shocks lead to a reduction in global economic activity after a significant lag, whereas shocks to oil demand do not.
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Resolving the Missing Deflation Puzzle
Jesper Lindé, Mathias Trabandt
Abstract
We propose a resolution of the missing deflation puzzle. Our resolution stresses the importance of nonlinearities in price- and wage-setting when the economy is exposed to large shocks. We show that a nonlinear macroeconomic model with real rigidities resolves the missing deflation puzzle, while a linearized version of the same underlying nonlinear model fails to do so. In addition, our nonlinear model reproduces the skewness of inflation and other macroeconomic variables observed in post-war U.S. data. All told, our results caution against the common practice of using linearized models to study inflation and output dynamics.
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Enforcement of Banking Regulation and the Cost of Borrowing
Yota D. Deli, Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Liuling Liu
Journal of Banking and Finance,
April
2019
Abstract
We show that borrowing firms benefit substantially from important enforcement actions issued on U.S. banks for safety and soundness reasons. Using hand-collected data on such actions from the main three U.S. regulators and syndicated loan deals over the years 1997–2014, we find that enforcement actions decrease the total cost of borrowing by approximately 22 basis points (or $4.6 million interest for the average loan). We attribute our finding to a competition-reputation effect that works over and above the lower risk of punished banks post-enforcement and survives in a number of sensitivity tests. We also find that this effect persists for approximately four years post-enforcement.
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‘And Forgive Us Our Debts’: Do Christian Moralities Influence Over-indebtedness of Individuals?
Iftekhar Hasan, Konstantin Kiesel, Felix Noth
IWH Discussion Papers,
Nr. 8,
2019
Abstract
This paper analyses whether Christian moralities and rules formed differently by Catholics and Protestants impact the likelihood of households to become overindebted. We find that over-indebtedness is lower in regions in which Catholics outweigh Protestants, indicating that Catholics‘ forgiveness culture and a stricter enforcement of rules by Protestants serve as explanations for our results. Our results provide evidence that religion affects the financial situations of individuals and show that even 500 years after the split between Catholics and Protestants, the differences in the mind-sets of both denominations play an important role for situations of severe financial conditions.
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Monetary Policy Communication: Frameworks and Market Impact
Michael McMahon, Alfred Schipke, Xiang Li
A. Schipke, M. Rodlauer, L. Zhang (Hrsg.), The Future of China's Bond Market. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund,
im Erscheinen
Abstract
Bond markets are an important conduit of monetary policy signals to the economy. Reforms that improve the functioning of bond markets will hence facilitate macroeconomic management effectiveness. Here communication plays an increasingly important role. Good monetary policy communication is not only important to improve the effectiveness of monetary policy in the first place, but by reducing uncertainty it makes bond markets more attractive for investors, further improving monetary transmission.
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Drivers of Systemic Risk: Do National and European Perspectives Differ?
Claudia M. Buch, Thomas Krause, Lena Tonzer
Journal of International Money and Finance,
March
2019
Abstract
With the establishment of the Banking Union, the European Central Bank has been granted the power to impose stricter regulations than the national regulator if systemic risks are not adequately addressed at the national level. We ask whether there is a cross-border externality in the sense that a bank’s systemic risk differs when applying a national versus a European perspective. On average, banks’ contribution to systemic risk is similar at the two regional levels, and so is the ranking of banks. Generally, larger banks and banks with a lower share of loans are more systemically important. The effects of these variables are qualitatively but not quantitatively similar at the national versus the European level.
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11.02.2019 • 3/2019
Harter Brexit würde deutschen Arbeitsmarkt besonders treffen
Sollte Großbritannien ohne Vertrag aus der Europäischen Union austreten, hätte das Folgen für den internationalen Handel und die Arbeitsmärkte in vielen Ländern, auch außerhalb Europas. Berechnungen des Leibniz-Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH) zeigen: Weltweit könnten mehr als 600 000 Arbeitskräfte betroffen sein, aber nirgends so viele wie in Deutschland.
Oliver Holtemöller
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Potential International Employment Effects of a Hard Brexit
Hans-Ulrich Brautzsch, Oliver Holtemöller
Abstract
We use the World Input Output Database (WIOD) to estimate the potential employment effects of a hard Brexit in 43 countries. In line with other studies we assume that imports from the European Union (EU) to the UK will decline by 25% after a hard Brexit. The absolute effects are largest in big EU countries which have close trade relationships with the UK like Germany and France. However, there are also large countries outside the EU which are heavily affected via global value chains like China, for example. The relative effects (in percent of total employment) are largest in Malta and Ireland. UK employment will also be affected via intermediate input production. Within Germany, the motor vehicle industry and in particular the “Autostadt” Wolfsburg are most affected.
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