This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of home computers on child and adolescent outcomes by exploiting a voucher program in Romania. Our main results indicate that home computers have both positive and negative effects on the development of human capital. Children who won a voucher to purchase a computer had significantly lower school grades but show improved computer skills. There is also some evidence that winning a voucher increased cognitive skills, as measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices. We do not find much evidence for an effect on non-cognitive outcomes. Parental rules regarding homework and computer use attenuate the effects of computer ownership, suggesting that parental monitoring and supervision may be important mediating factors.
Unemployment rates are an important macroeconomic indicator for describing the economic condition of an economy. Unemployment figures in the media are usually reported for the total population, but it is worth taking a more differentiated look at unemployment figures. For example, one can distinguish between the unemployment rates of different age groups in the active labour force. The unemployment rates of the younger generation can be quite different from those of the total working population or older generations for various reasons. Moreover, as the population is ageing in many European societies, the age of the median voter is shifting and might encourage politicians to design labour market policies that specifically target older age groups. Figure 1 shows the unemployment rates of young people aged between 15 and 24 years compared to the total unemployment rates in the European countries in 2015.2 As shown in Figure 1, the youth unemployment rate is largely higher than the total unemployment rate in almost every country shown in the figure. The most striking rates are those of youth unemployment in Greece (49.8%), Spain (48.3%), Croatia (43%), Italy (40.3%), Portugal (32%), Slovakia (26.5%) and France (24.7%). Italy is the country with the highest difference between the total unemployment rate and the youth unemployment rate, with a youth unemployment rate that is 28.4 percentage points (pp) higher than the total unemployment rate. There are several other countries in which youth unemployment is considerably higher than total unemployment like Greece (24.9pp), Spain (26.2pp), and Croatia (26.7pp). In countries like Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands where youth unemployment rates and total unemployment rates are the lowest in Europe, there is also a gap between total and youth unemployment. Looking at the European countries shown in Figure 1 reveals a huge divergence in Europe concerning youth unemployment. On the one hand, there are
Immigration has long been a topic high on the political and academic agenda. At the EU-level, the recent political debate has focused on how to accommodate arriving refugees and the recent failed attempts to establish a functioning European mechanism for a more even spatial distribution of new arrivals. At the national level, there is a longstanding debate over the effects of immigration on the host country, be it labour market effects, fiscal effects, welfare effects, effects on longterm growth, or effects on natives’ migration behaviour. The last question is important for both European and national political debates. In this article we ask: do natives change their internal migration behaviour when exposed to increasing immigration? Our case study is Sweden. Sweden has, relative to other European countries, high levels of refugee immigration, stretching back over three decades. Over the last seven decades, there has been an increase in the number of immigrants to Sweden, as well as a change in the immigrants’ source region. This is highlighted in Figure 1. In the mid 1900’s, the foreign born population made up less than 3% of the Swedish population, and largely originated from the Nordic countries. This pattern has since changed, with an initial increase in labour market immigration from non-Nordic European countries in the 1960s and 1970s, which was followed by non-European refugeeand family-related immigration, especially from the early 1980s onward. The foreign born population in Sweden now constitutes over 16% of the population, with the majority of foreigners having been born outside Europe. With such a significant change in population characteristics, questions emerge as to how the host country is affected.
Women’s labour market outcomes have improved substantially in the past decades, both in absolute terms and relative to men, in the United States and Western European countries as well as in several other countries around the world. Specifically, gender gaps have narrowed considerably (and in several cases disappeared) in human capital accumulation (educational attainment), labour force participation, hours of work and occupation. Claudia Goldin referred to this phenomenon as a “grand gender convergence” (Goldin 2014). Yet, gender gaps in earnings and leadership still persist. Women earn substantially less than men and are under-represented in leadership positions in firms and organisations more broadly. The presence and persistence of gender gaps in earnings and leadership is cause for great concern for both reasons of social justice and efficiency, to the extent that the gender imbalances reflect a sub-optimal allocation of human capital in firms and in the economy. In this article, we focus on the causes and consequences of female-male gaps in earnings and representation at the top of organisations. Gender gaps in wages and leadership are one of the most researched topics in labour economics and beyond. Rather than attempting to summarise the vast literature on these subjects, we present a selective discussion of recent empirical work in an attempt to highlight recent findings on causes and consequences of gender gaps in the labour market and to discuss the main knowledge gaps and what we believe are some of the most promising areas for future research.1 Most of the papers we focus on refer to the United States, but the trends and patterns described are likely to apply more broadly.
This article investigates the effects of the exemptions of the Small Investor Protection Act, introduced in the summer of 2015. By imposing increased regulations, the Small Investor Protection Act aims to improve transparency for investors in the so-called “grey capital market”. Nonetheless, the act entails a number of exemptions. Firms financed via crowdinvesting platforms, as well as social, charitable and religious projects financed via so-called investments are exempt from the prospectus requirement. We base our investi-gation of these exemptions on a crowdinvesting-data-base, a survey of social and charitable organisations and interviews with experts in the field. In short, one year after the introduction of the Small Investor Protection Act no strong visible impact can be seen on the market for crowdinvesting in Germany. The data also shows that investment behaviour has not changed sig-nificantly due to the newly introduced self-disclosure requirements concerning the investor´s income and assets. However, the preferred types of investments in the market for crowdinvesting have recently changed from silent partnerships to profit-participating loans and subordinated loans. Both social and charitable organisations do not seem to be making use of the exemptions in the newly implemented act, since they can follow simpler rules and regulations to gain exemption from the prospectus requirements. The Small Investor Protection Act (“Kleinan-legerschutzgesetz”, short: KASG), introduced on the 3 July, 2015, includes numerous amendments to the regulation of financial markets. The legislative initiative was largely triggered by the insolvency of the energy firm PROKON, which affected approximately 75,000 small investors. The aim of the KASG was to improve investor protection in the so-called “grey capital mar-ket”, which is a market for less-regulated financial products. KASG amended the German Investment Act (“Vermögensanlagengesetz”, short:
In the aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis, the ECB became deeply involved in activities aimed at stabilizing the financial system, over-leveraged banks, and over-indebted governments. This article addresses the costs of these monetary policy measures, which heavily exceed the typical distributional side effects of conventional monetary policy during a “normal” business and interest rate cycle. The empirical estimates presented refer to Germany.
During and after the Great Recession, the European Central Bank adopted unconventional monetary policies that are more or less uncontroversial in the literature. By contrast, its quantitative easing (QE) program that started in 2015 is highly disputed. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such a policy.
The complexity of issues surrounding the topic of “refuge” dominated political, social and journalistic discussions in 2015–16 in Germany and Europe. Whereas positive expectations for the future and confidence had long been predominant in the Federal Republic, as of autumn 2015, the focus shifted towards fending off refugees. Many of the institutions, instruments and concepts of German refugee policy have been strained beyond their limits by the challenges emerging since the beginning of 2015. The extent to which the measures taken in connection with refugee policy are compatible with democratic values and aims is still being intensively debated. Observation of the current situation calls for situating it in the context of the global question of refugees and the phenomenon of forced migration in the 20th century. At the same time, we need to focus on the change in the policy and practice of admission of those people who have sought refuge in Germany after fleeing from violence.
