Volume 232, Issue 1

Using data on the valuation of Christmas gifts received by students enrolled in different fields at a German university, we investigate whether the endowment effect, the difference between asking and bidding prices, differs between males and females, students of economics and other fields and whether it varies with the market price of the object under consideration. Our estimation results suggest that female students display a significantly higher endowment effect, indicating that experimental studies on the endowment effect are highly sensitive towards the choice of the subject pool. The results further indicate that the endowment effect depends on the market price of the object. Finally, even though the point estimates hint towards both, a lower WTP and WTA of economic students, these differences are not statistically significant at conventional levels.

Intangible assets are largely ignored by the “traditional” System of National Accounts (SNA), although they play an increasingly important economic role. The reasons for this are the substantial measurement and valuation problems. This article applies a methodology based on Hulten (1979) and Corrado et al. (2005) to provide some indications on the amount of investment in intangible goods in the German economy. I discuss the proposed categorization approach and quantify the different components for the German economy, drawing on a number of different data sources. I show that the amount of investment in intangibles is significant. An inclusion into the SNA would add around Euro 142.4 bn to total investment in the German economy in 2004. This corresponds to an increase of almost 70%. However, an international comparison shows that Germany falls short in terms of intangible spending relative to the US and UK.

Unemployment insurance (UI) benefit sanctions in form of benefit reductions are intended to set an incentive to comply with job search requirements and to decrease moral hazard behaviour. However, sanctions might also affect the subsequent employment history. Empirical research on long-term effects is scarce. Using administrative data, we investigate short- and long-term effects of sanctions on the reemployment probability of individuals in West Germany who entered UI benefit receipt between April 2000 and March 2001. As outcomes we consider regular employment, other employment, and having dropped out of the registered labour market. By applying a matching approach that takes the timing of treatment into account, we identify the ex post effect of UI sanctions. According to our results, sanctions are effective in increasing the probability of regular employment for young sanctioned UI benefit recipients. Older women on average respond to a sanction by taking up jobs of lower quality. For both women and men, we find an increased number of months out of the official work force after a sanction.

Several factors bring about a rise in old age poverty in Germany, especially in East Germany. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) we examine causes and extent of old age poverty in Germany. We begin our inquiry with a cross section regression in order to determine the impact of several factors on retirement incomes in Germany. In the second step we performan income projection of today’s 50 to 55 year-old people for the year 2023. In doing so, we take into account different sources of income, including several forms of capital income and the calculated rent of owner-occupied houses and flats.We find a significant rise in old age poverty especially in East Germany as a consequence of rising unemployment after the German unification.

The introduction of the euro coins in 2002 presented a unique opportunity to study the crossborder migration and the mixing process of coins in different euro-area countries. This note analyses how many euro coins flow from and into Germany and which composition of coins is to be expected in the long run. A simple model of coin migration is formulated and calibrated for Q1 coins. The ratio of German coins circulating in Germany is likely to settle around 50%if past growth of coin volumes continues. In contrast to banknotes, allocation of coin seigniorage depends on national coin issuance. Different national growth rates of coin volumes have important implications for coin seigniorage.