All Publications
This study aims at disclosing the effect of small temperature drops (10–15 °C) of the electrolyte on Contact Glow Discharge Electrolysis (CGDE). In our experiments, we measure the temperature change of electrolyte and electrode as well as the change in current following on from the addition of, first, frozen and, second, boiling KOH aqueous solution (0.1 M). Quite surprisingly, only the addition of frozen KOH aqueous solution has a significant impact on current (+130%), caused by the decrease in electrolyte temperature (-11 °C). In contrast, the addition of boiling KOH aqueous solution has a negligible effect on current. A very similar behavior is recorded when frozen or boiling type III deionized water is used: the addition of ice has an even stronger impact on current (+145 %) and on electrolyte temperature (-14 °C), while adding boiling water has no measurable effect. Thus, we here demonstrated that electrolyte temperature is critical for managing the responsiveness of the CGDE system. Our results pave the way toward temperature controlled CGDE, a powerful tool for a greener and a more efficient environmental chemistry.
This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurship and productivity for the 27 EU member countries using panel data. Given the critical role that digitalization plays in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the model was re-estimated using the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and its subcomponents as instruments for entrepreneurship. The results show a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurship and productivity, as well as a positive relation between digitalization and entrepreneurship. Moreover, all components of the DESI index except for Human Capital also demonstrate a positive relationship with entrepreneurship. These results provide policymakers with a digital agenda to stimulate entrepreneurship as an engine of productivity and growth and shed light on the importance of empirically evaluating entrepreneurship in the light of digitalization.
Could the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) be the means to higher growth and productivity in developing countries? An alarming slump of global productivity growth rates, especially after the global financial crisis, underlines the relevance of this question which does not find a clear answer in the literature. What we do is to estimate the impact of ICT on total factor productivity using capacity and usage-based approaches. Latest panel data of 76 developing countries from 1991 to 2014 is entering our regression models. The results of the different approaches, which allow for unobserved country effects and non-linear relationships, are not optimistic: ICT is only a minor engine of TFP growth. Countries with relatively high ICT investment may be able to increase their TFP growth rates by between 0.1 and 0.3% annually relative to those with modest investment rates. That is, the digital gap matters, but reducing the digital gap alone is not enough to markedly increase growth rates.
Governments worldwide reacted swiftly to the global financial crisis by tougher regulations. This paper investigates the impacts of the regulatory environment on operating costs using panel data of 2,200 German banks over the timeframe from 1999 to 2014. We estimate cost functions with and without proxies for regulation and analyze the results with respect to period, bank size, and group affiliation. Our results show that regulatory costs were peaking in 2001, 2008, and lately since 2012. Most interesting, however, is the asymmetry of regulation: Whereas the cost effects were symmetric for all banks until 2003, the last ten years were different. Larger institutions and savings banks could neutralize the impacts of increasing regulation on operating costs. In contrast, smaller banks, especially if they are cooperative banks, were facing significant cost increases. We therefore expect unintended structural shifts like a reduction in the diversity of banks, which are negative for competition, service quality, and for the stability of the financial system.
This study contributes to the banking efficiency literature by using a three input–five output stochastic frontier translog cost function specification to investigate cost efficiency, scale economies, and technological progress in the Egyptian banking sector. The study analyzes the efficiency of Egyptian banks in the period 2000–2006 which witnessed major regulatory and structural changes. The analysis is based on a panel data of 34 commercial banks representing about 75% of the banking sector in Egypt. The results show that the banks suffer significantly from internal X-inefficiency with an average cost reduction potential of 12%. Increasing economies of scale are found to exist up to a bank size of about EGP30 bn, implying that all but the four largest banks in Egypt could reduce their average costs by growth. Surprisingly, Egyptian commercial banks did not benefit from technological change; instead they faced a negative dynamics of the cost frontier. Further regression analysis conducted to explain the different efficiency levels of the banks revealed a positive impact of size, growth, and merger activities on efficiency, which implies bigger is better for Egyptian Banks.
Motivated by the high abatement costs of the Kyoto Protocol for Germany, this paper is estimating the economic impact of global warming on agriculture in that country. The hedonic approach is used as theoretical background. Stating that land prices are – among others – determined by climatic factors, this approach can consequently be used to value global warming. To avoid a priori restrictions stemming from functional forms, the land price function is modeled as quadratic Box–Cox function that nests a wide range of specifications. In a second step, the estimated results are used to forecast the impact of climate change. The results indicate that German farmers will be winners of climate change in the short run, with maximum gains occurring at a temperature increase of +0.6°C against current levels. In the long run, there may be losses from global warming. However, the net present value from climate change is under the most probable scenarios positive.
Motivated by recent statistics that show significant growth in labor productivity, this paper seeks to analyze the long-term relationship between domestic R&D, knowledge stock and productivity dynamics. Time series data of the German manufacturing industry is used to estimate a variable cost function with the stock of knowledge being dependent upon current and past R&D spending. The estimates indicate that 50% of the effects of R&D on the knowledge stock appear within 4 years. However, the rate of return on R&D are shown to be drastically declining; recent rates of return on R&D are estimated to have reached an all-time low spanning the last 45 years. Current yields of R&D are only one third compared to the sixties. In conclusion, though the productivity slowdown of the seventies seems to have been overcome, this is not attributed to R&D investments.
Immigrants in Germany have poor earnings performance relative to natives. Claiming that human-capital
endowments determine earnings potentials rather than actual earnings, a stochastic
earnings frontier is estimated and used to seek systematic differences between natives and migrants
for GSOEP data for the year 2000. While empirical results clearly support the frontier assumption,
natives and immigrants are surprisingly about the same with respect to the frontier. Assuming a halfnormal
distribution of the wage gap, on average, both groups transform a modest 84% share of their
potential income into market earnings. This implies wage inequality can be attributed to humancapital
differentials alone. The human-capital endowments of immigrants are largely determined
by the very low percentage who have college degrees, their slow assimilation and zero-return on
imported experience. The paper also tries to explain individual wage gaps, which are significantly
decreased in married subjects raising families, but increased in employees in small- or medium-sized
relative to larger firms. However, these variables only make minor contributions to the variance.
Die Krise der Medienindustrie ist im wesentlichen eine Krise des Werbemarktes. Angesichts eines Beitrages der Werbung in Höhe von zwei Dritteln zum Umsatzaufkommen der Massenmedien überrascht dies nicht,wird aber durch das vorliegende Zahlenmaterial noch einmal bestätigt. Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob der beobachtete Einbruch die historischen Zyklen der Werbebranche bestätigt, oder ob ein Strukturbruch und damit ein Zerfall der bisherigen Zyklusmuster stattgefunden hat. Hierzu werden in einem ersten Schritt mit Hilfe der Spektralanalyse die in der Vergangenheit dominierenden Zyklen identifiziert. Als Datenmaterial stehen die Werbeausgaben von 1960 bis 2003 auf Jahresbasis zur Verfügung, wobei die Werbeausgaben nach vier Mediengattungen differenziert sind. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die identifizierten Zyklen als erklärende Variable in ein Regressionsmodell eingefügt, um deren Erklärungsbeitrag zu den historisch beobachteten Veränderungsraten des Werbemarktes zu bestimmen. Es zeigt sich, dass die beobachteten Veränderungsraten relativ gut durch das gemessene Zyklusgefüge mit sich überlagernden Einzelzyklen erklärt werden kann. Der Test auf Strukturbruch wird verworfen – zumindest bislang kann somit davon ausgegangen werden, dass die Krise des Werbemarktes das historische Zyklusmuster eher bestätigt als zerstört.
This study uses the concept of shadow prices for measuring the impacts of climate change. By estimating a restricted profit function rather than a cost or a production function the explanatory power of the model is increased because of an endogenous output structure. Using low aggregated panel data on Western German farmers, the results imply that the agricultural production process is significantly influenced by climate conditions. Simulation results using a 2 CO2 climate scenario show positive impacts for all regions in Germany. Interestingly, the spatial distribution of the gains
is indicating no advantage for those regions, which currently suffer from insufficient temperature. Finally, the importance of an endogenous output structure is confirmed by the finding that the desired product mix will drastically change.
Based on an unbalanced panel of all Bavarian cooperative banks for the years of 1989--97, which includes information on 283 mergers, we analyze motives and cost effects of small-scale mergers in German banking. Estimating a frontier cost function with a time-variable stochastic efficiency term, we show that positive scale and scope effects from a merger arise only if the merged unit closes part of the former branch network. When we compare actual mergers to a simulation of hypothetical mergers, size effects of observed mergers turn out to be slightly more favorable than for all possible mergers. Banks taken over by others are less efficient than the average bank in the same size class, but exhibit, on average, the same efficiency as the acquiring firms. For the post-merger phase, our empirical results provide no evidence for efficiency gains from merging, but point instead to a leveling off of differences among the merging units.
Using 1992 data of 1490 banks covering about 40% of German banking, we specify a
multi-product translog cost function and follow the “thick frontier”-approach to control for cost inefficiency when evaluating the technology of banking. Scale economies are found to exist up to a size of about 5 billion DM of total assets, with diseconomies being caused by non-operating costs. There is hardly any evidence of economies of scope. Compared to cost inefficiency external factors play a surprisingly strong role in explaining cost differences between high-cost and low-cost banks. Smaller banks turn out to be more responsive to input prices.
This article applies a modern empirical test of conduct to assess competitive conditions in the German banking sector. The elasticity of total revenues with respect to changes in input prices is calculated, using the intermediation approach as model of the banking firm. The functional form of the revenue equation is specified as a Translog function. The empirical basis consists of a panel of 1432 German universal banks with an observation period of at least four years for each of them. To account for potential consequences of the distinct regulatory environment and average bank size, the estimations are run separately for the three subgroups „cooperative banks”, „savings banks” and „credit banks”. The empirical results are consistent with the behavior of monopolistic competition, rejecting significantly the hypotheses of both monopoly and perfect competition. Differences between the subgroups turned out to be small, rejecting a causality from market share on market behavior.
