Volume 245, Issue 6

The Covid-19 pandemic, in Canada and around the world, accelerated trends toward non-cash payments. In this paper, we assess the impact of high-frequency fluctuations in the severity of the pandemic on payment behaviour. These fluctuations are measured by daily changes in restrictions (“stringency”) and reported case counts. Our main measures of payment habits are the ratios of the value and transaction counts of cash withdrawals to debit card payments. Econometrically, we use local projections to estimate the effects on payment habits. We find evidence that consumer behaviour adjusted during the pandemic: consumers withdrew less cash relative to card payment and avoided frequent trips for cash withdrawals and point-of-sale purchases through higher transaction amounts. Based on our modelling, once stringency measures eased and case counts receded, cash use partially recovered, although not to pre-pandemic levels.

In this paper, we examine how building permit rates, in particular those for housing in one- and two-family homes, were affected by the presence of refugees in the wake of the 2015/16 refugee surge in Germany. Our panel data set covers all German counties with available data over the years 2011–2019. Our results show that a larger presence of refugees tended to lower the building permit rate, not in the very short run but over time. The effect is concentrated in the years 2017–2019 at the end of our sample. On average over those years, a doubling of the population’s refugee share induced a decline in the permit rate by 7 %–9 %. This suggests a lower future housing supply as a potential unintended consequence of the refugee surge.

Although economists widely advocate carbon pricing as an effective solution to reduce carbon emissions, this mechanism has had so far limited effects. This paper proposes a new type of tax to help finance (and accelerate) the green transition. A carbon wealth tax (CWT) is proposed to be levied on carbon-intensive (brown) wealth rather than primarily on carbon-intensive goods. We consider tax implementation issues such as tax base, incidence, and efficiency. Moreover, we analyze the impacts of such a tax scheme by setting up a model of asset pricing and dynamic portfolio decisions. Green and carbon-intensive returns used in the model are calibrated with low-frequency returns on stock prices between 2010 and 2021. We find that such a tax and subsidy scheme is a feasible and effective instrument in speeding up the transition to a greener economy, particularly in protracted periods of economic contraction. Our approach also brings a new perspective to the wealth inequality discussions.

The availability of social media data is growing and represents a new data source for economic research. This paper presents a detailed study on the use of data from a career-oriented social networking platform. The employment data are exported from user profiles and linked to the Mannheim Enterprise Panel (MUP). The linked employer–employee (LEE) data consist of 14 million employments for 1.5 million employers and describes around 9 million employee flows. Plausibility checks confirm that career-oriented social networking data contain valuable information about employments and employee flows. Using such platform data provides opportunities for research on employee mobility, networks, and local ecosystems’ role in economic performance at the employer and the regional level.

This paper introduces a repeated-sales algorithm tailored for the German real estate market, addressing the lack of such data. Utilizing the dataset RWI-GEO-RED from FDZ Ruhr at RWI, which exploits data from ImmobilienScout24.de, the algorithm classifies repeat-sales and repeat-rent listings, overcoming challenges like measurement errors and deviations in property characteristics. The methodology, based on nearest centroid classification, ensures accurate clustering of similar listings. The paper compares the new repeated-sales indices with the traditional hedonic price index, revealing more conservative estimates of rent growth. Additionally, the data’s panel structure allows for detailed analysis of unit-level dynamics and mispricing. The study highlights the advantages of this approach and suggests potential research avenues, providing a valuable tool for economists and policymakers to assess housing market trends in Germany.