Die Entscheidung für eine Ausbildung oder ein Studium im Bereich Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik (MINT) hängt nicht nur von absoluten Leistungen in Mathematik ab, sondern davon, wie gut Mathematik relativ zu anderen Fächern – etwa Sprache – gelingt. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die intergenerationale Übertragung solcher relativen Stärken in Mathematik und Sprache auf Basis niederländischer Testdaten von Eltern und ihren Kindern. Wir zeigen, dass Eltern, die im Verhältnis zu Sprache besonders gut in Mathematik abschneiden, mit deutlich höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit Kinder haben, die ebenfalls relativ besser in Mathematik sind. Zudem belegen wir, dass diese Übertragung relativer Stärken nicht ausschließlich genetisch oder familiär geprägt ist, sondern durch Schule und Lernumfeld – und damit durch Bildungspolitik – beeinflusst werden kann.

Promoting green product consumption is one important element in building a sustainable society. Yet green products are usually more costly. In times of high inflation, not only budget constraints but also the fear that prices will continue to rise might dampen green product consumption and, hence, limit the effectiveness of exerted efforts to promote sustainable behaviors. To test this suggestion, we conducted a Germany-wide survey with almost 1,200 respondents, followed by a framed field experiment (N=500) to confirm causality. In the survey, respondents’ stated “green” purchasing behavior is, as to be expected, positively correlated with concerns about climate change. It is also negatively correlated with concerns about future inflation and energy costs, but after controlling for observable characteristics such as income and educational level only the correlation with concerns about future prices remains significant. This result is driven by individuals with below-median environmental attitude. In the framed field experiment, we use the priming method to manipulate the saliency of inflation concerns. Whereas sizably relaxing the budget constraint (i.e., by 50 percent) has no impact on the share of organic products in participants’ baskets, the priming significantly decreases the share of organic products for individuals with below-median environmental attitude, similar to the survey data.

We investigate whether a firm’s exposure to climate change, as proxied by disclosures during quarterly earnings conference calls, provides forward-looking information to investors regarding the long-term association of stock prices with current earnings and the book values of equity. Following a key regulatory mandate around the formation of the cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions related to climate change, firms’ climate change exposure decreases the association between current earnings and stock prices while increasing the relevance of book values of equity (i.e., historical earnings). However, these relationships flip when the sentiment around climate change exposure is negative, suggesting that the risks related to climate change exposure provide forward-looking information to investors when they evaluate the ability of current earnings to predict firm values. Such a relationship is stronger for new economy firms and is sensitive to conservative accounting. We also observe that the inclusion of climate change disclosure to our models improves the joint ability of earnings and book values to predict stock prices.

This paper proposes to explain the productivity growth slowdown with the poaching of disruptive inventors by firms these inventors threaten with their research. I build an endogenous growth model with incremental and disruptive innovation and an inventor labor market where this defensive poaching takes place. Incremental firms poach more as they grow, which lowers the probability of disruption and makes large incremental firms even more prevalent. I perform an event study around disruptive innovations to confirm the main features of the model: Disruptions increase future research productivity, hurt incumbent inventors and raise the probability of future disruption. Without disruption, technology classes slowly trend even further towards incrementalism. I calibrate the model to the global patent landscape in 1990 and show that the model predicts 52% of the decline of disruptive innovation until 2010.