Volume 11, Issue 4

This paper revisits Grunfeld’s well-known investment data, one of the most widely used datasets in all of applied econometrics, on the occasion of their 50th anniversary. It presents, apparently for the first time after the publication of the original Chicago Ph.D. thesis, the full dataset, points out errors and inconsistencies in several currently available versions, and also revisits a number of empirical studies from the literature of the last five decades. Our findings provide a cautionary tale on the use of widely known data and underline the need for mandatory data and code archives.

Existing empirical evidence is inconclusive as to whether professional investors show more sophisticated behavior than individual investors. Therefore, we study two important groups of professional investors and compare them with laymen by means of a survey covering about 500 investors.We find that some professionals, i.e. institutional investors, behave in a more sophisticated manner than laymen, whereas the less researched investment advisors seem to do even worse. Our survey approach complements available evidence due to its design: it compares professionals with (qualified) interested laymen, it covers six measures of sophisticated behavior, uses several control variables and strictly compares investment decisions in the private domain.

This paper investigates politically connected firms in Germany. With the introduction of a new transparency law in 2007, information on additional income sources for all members of the German parliament became publicly available. We find that members of the conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the liberal party (FDP) are more likely to work for firms than members of left-wing parties (SPD and The Left) or the green party (Alliance 90/The Greens). Politically connected firms are larger, less risky and have lower market valuations than unconnected firms. They also have fewer growth opportunities, but slightly better accounting performance. On the stock market, connected firms significantly outperformed unconnected firms in 2006, i.e. before the publication of the data on political connections. Differences in stock market performance were much smaller in 2007.

We analyze the behavior of investors in the Berlin rental apartment house market over the years 1980-2004. Using constant-quality multipliers ( price- rent ratios), we reject the hypothesis that multipliers in the market were set in a rational manner. Supported by narrative evidence, we conjecture that investors misjudged the economic effects of the German reunification. To examine this, we employ a stylized structural economic model and analyze the effects of shocks on rational multipliers. It seems that investors confused the reunification with a permanent supply side shock to the economy. By basing their investment decisions on this misjudgement, investors behaved irrationally, but in a very uncertain and unprecedented environment.

We use German Sample Survey income data to examine the income distribution for elderly individuals during the period from 1978 to 2003. The elderly population, defined as people of age 55 and older, is decomposed by people resident in the Old and New Federal States. Further, we distinguish between persons receiving old-age pensions and persons who do not. Inequality estimates are decomposed by income components, and the bootstrap method is used to test for statistical significance of results.

This paper studies competition in prices and opening hours in a model with free entry. It is shown that under free competition market failures arise: Entry is excessive and opening hours are under-provided. The larger the demand elasticity, the larger market failures are going to be. Restrictions on opening hours aggravate this failure. We analyze the impact of a liberalization of opening hours. The model predicts that prices will remain constant in the short run but increase in the long run. Concentration in the retail sector will rise. Additionally, employment in the retail sector increases.

Temporary fluctuations of the US consumption-wealth ratio do not only predict excess returns on the US but also international stock markets at the business cycle frequency. This finding is the reflection of a common, temporary component in national stock markets. Exposure to this common component explains up to 50% of the pairwise covariation among long-horizon returns on the G7 stock markets for the time period from 1970 to 2008. This latter finding is less pronounced in the post-1990s period.