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Content:Belke, Ansgar: Money, Credit and House Prices – An ARDL-Approach for Germany JBNST - Vol. 230/2 - 2010, pp. 138-162.
+ show abstract- hide abstractThe current financial crisis is often said to be caused by excessive liquidity and distorted incentives
in the US subprime real estate sector. Taking this as a starting point, this paper analyzes
the relation between house prices and credit respectively money growth between 1992 and
2006 (West German price data) and from 1997 to 2006 (East German price data). We focus
on the German economy which – due to the creation of excess capacities in the wake of reunification
– did not experience a house price bubble in contrast to other euro area economies
such as Ireland and Spain. Applying an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach we
test for cointegration among the relevant variables. After estimating the long-run coefficients,
we derive the optimal specification of the corresponding error-correction models and estimate
them. Our results suggest that both monetary and credit policy are responsible for house price
development especially in Western Germany. We also check exhaustively for well-behaved
estimated residuals and conduct some tests for structural breaks and robustness checks.
For instance, we show that tax policies – specific depreciation possibilities in the new federal
states – also have a significant impact on house prices but without dominating the impact of
credit and money growth. Our results are also robust to the application of a more traditional
cointegration testing procedure in the spirit of Johansen and Juselius. Available in: English Burgstaller, Johann: Bank Lending and Monetary Policy Transmission in Austria JBNST - Vol. 230/2 - 2010, pp. 163-185.
+ show abstract- hide abstractThis paper examines the role of banks in the propagation process of monetary policy actions.
Testable hypotheses are deduced from the theory of the lending channel, which argues that
after a policy-induced drain of funds from the banking sector, some (types of) institutions
are unable or unwilling to retain their prior levels of lending. To identify the decisive bank
attributes, disaggregated data for the full population of Austrian banks is used for the
1998–2005 period. The average Austrian bank is found to significantly reduce its growth
rate of loans after an increase in policy-driven interest rates. Heterogeneous lending reactions
appear to be more pronounced for the institutions that are organized in multi-tier sectors. At
large, the results are not compatible with the widespread notion that the Austrian banking
sector absorbs monetary shocks. The lending channel also seems of aggregate importance
as impulses in loan supply are found to significantly affect the growth rate of real GDP. Available in: English Görlitz, Katja: The Development of Employers’ Training Investments Over Time – A Decomposition Analysis Using German Establishment Data JBNST - Vol. 230/2 - 2010, pp. 186-207.
+ show abstract- hide abstractUsing establishment data covering the time period 1997 to 2007, this paper investigates trends
of employer-sponsored further training in Germany, with a focus on the share of establishments
investing in training. InWest and East Germany alike, I find a positive time trend in the share of
training active establishments. Applying Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition techniques shows that
changes in some establishment characteristics affect the trend, however, not only in a positive
way.While the increase of the fraction of skilled workers, changes in industry composition and
the risen share of innovative establishments contribute positively to the trend, the decreased
fraction of establishments engaged in collective bargaining operates in the opposite direction.
In spite of these findings, the overall characteristics effect is rather small. Available in: English Jahn, Elke J.: Reassessing the Pay Gap for Temps in Germany JBNST - Vol. 230/2 - 2010, pp. 208-233.
+ show abstract- hide abstractAs a consequence of the rapid growth of temporary agency employment inGermany, the debate
on the remuneration of temporary agency workers has intensified recently. The study finds that
the earnings gap of temporary help workers in Germany is indeed large and increased during
the past decade. Decomposition reveals that the widening gap mainly is driven by changes in
relative skill prices and less by differences in the workforce composition. Temps already have to
accept a marked earnings decline before entering the temporary help sector. Nevertheless, after
leaving the sector temporary help workers no longer have to accept a pay penalty. A recent
reform set a high incentive for temporary help agencies to pay their workers according to
a collective agreement. Surprisingly, the unionization of the sector could not bring thewidening
earnings gap to a halt. Available in: English Woessmann, Ludger: Institutional Determinants of School Efficiency and Equity: German States as a Microcosm for OECD Countries JBNST - Vol. 230/2 - 2010, pp. 234-270.
+ show abstract- hide abstractCross-country evidence on student achievement might be hampered by omitted country characteristics
such as language or legal differences. This paper uses cross-state variation in Germany,
whose sixteen states share the same language and legal system, but pursue different education
policies. Education production function models are estimated using state-level PISA-E
data, where possible pooling three subjects and three waves to obtain up to 138 test-score
observations. The same results found previously across countries holdwithin Germany:Higher
mean student performance is associated with central exams, private school operation, and socio-
economic background, but not with spending, while higher equality of opportunity is associated
with reduced tracking. In models that pool German states with OECD countries and
combine up to 54 state and country observations, these institutional determinants do not differ
significantly between the sample of German states and the sample of OECD countries, indicating
that the existing cross-country evidence is not substantially biased by unobserved countryspecific
factors. Available in: English
Book Review Nowotny, E., P. Mooslechner, D. Ritzberger-Grünwald (eds.): The Integration of European Labour Markets JBNST - Vol. 230/2 - 2010, pp. 271-271.
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