This paper analyses the link between the VDAX as a proxy for European financial uncertainty and the number of terror incidents in Western Europe. Considering data of the Global Terrorism Database, the number of terror incidents does – on average – not affect financial uncertainty. In...

The question of whether two drugs – namely alcohol and tobacco – are used as complements or substitutes is of crucial interest if side-effects of anti-drug policies are considered. Numerous papers have empirically addressed this issue by estimating demand systems for alcohol and tobacco and...

A number of recent empirical studies document significant effects of in-patient care quality indicators on the choice of hospital. These studies use either objective quality indicators based on quantitative figures, or if subjective reputation scores are used, scores based on the opinion of...

We provide two methods to compute the largest subset of a set of observations that is consistent with the Generalised Axiom of Revealed Preference. The algorithm provided by Houtman and Maks (1985) is not comput ationally feasible for larger data sets, while our methods are not limited in that...

Methods for estimating equivalence scales usually rely on rather strong identifying assumptions. This paper considers a partially identified estimator for equivalence scales derived from the potential outcomes framework and using nonparametric methods for estimation, which requires only mild...

Existing literature analyzing the choice of received long-term care by frail elderly (65+ years) predominantly focuses on physical and psychological conditions of elderly people as factors that influence the decision for a particular type of care. Until now, however, the regional in-patient...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

This article provides a robust non-parametric approach to demand analysis based on a concept called homothetic efficiency. Homotheticity is a useful restriction or assumption but data rarely satisfy testable conditions. To overcome this problem, this article provides a way to estimate homothetic...

The overestimation of willingness-to-pay (WTP) in hypothetical responses is a wellknown finding in the literature. Various techniques have been proposed to remove or, at least, reduce this bias. Using responses from a panel of about 6,500 German households on their WTP for a variety of power...

According to the German SAVE survey, more than 40 percent of households regularly save fixed amounts rather than flexibly adjusting savings to income variations as assumed by the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH). Fixed amount saving behaviour could thus imply a challenge to PIH-based standard...