This paper introduces a statistical technique, Support Vector Machines (SVM), which is considered by the Deutsche Bundesbank as an alternative for company rating. A special attention is paid to the features of the SVM which provide a higher accuracy of company classification into solvent and...

This paper derives a new effect of trade liberalisation on the quality of the environment. We show that in the presence of heterogeneous firms the aggregate volume of emissions is influenced not only by the long-established scale effect, but also by a reallocation effect resulting from an...

This paper presents two new tools for the identification of faking interviewers in surveys. One method is based on Benford's Law, and the other exploits the empirical observation that fakers most often produce answers with less variability than could be expected from the whole survey. We focus...

We construct a narrative instrument for government investment from official records in Germany. Using structural vector autoregressions, we document a significant crowding-in of private investment and an output multiplier of roughly 2. Then, we match a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general...

In this paper, we develop the game-theoretic electricity market model ElStorM that includes the possibility of strategic electricity storage. We apply the model to the German electricity market and analyze different realistic and counterfactual cases of strategic and non-strategic pumped hydro...

Using data from the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2008, this paper analyses the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner's personality, hours of work,...

In this paper, we develop a market screening model to detect inconstancies in price changes. Although there is a long history of industrial organization research of collusion, price setting behavior, and conduct - a robust model to detect structural changes in market structure was missing so...

Many commonly used treatment effects estimators rely on the unconfoundedness assumption ("selection on observables") which is fundamentally non-testable. When evaluating the effects of labor market policies, researchers need to observe variables that affect both treatment participation and labor...

A shift from zonal pricing to smaller zones and nodal pricing improves efficiency and security of system operation. Resulting price changes do however also shift profits and surplus between and across generation and load. As individual actorscan lose, they might oppose any reform. We explore how...