Volume 10, Issue 2

The Annual Congress of the German Economic Association has become one of the largest national meetings of professional economists. The papers contributed at the Congress undergo a rigorous and competitive selection procedure where only about one half of all submissions are accepted for presentation. We analyze this selection process based on data from the Congresses held between 2005 and 2008. We find that the acceptance decision depends on the previous publication record of the submitting author and on the institution with which (s)he is affiliated. Moreover, the status of being a professor increases the likelihood of acceptance, whereas completion of a Ph.D. degree, or even a habilitation, does not.

This article statistically analyzes the moonlighting activities of members of the German Bundestag. In contrast to popular prejudices about “the political class,” the data reveal that there are considerable differences among the 613 MPs regarding (i) the number and type of ancillary activities and (ii) the amount of outside income. Moreover a multiple regression analysis shows that the factors party affiliation, duration of parliamentary membership, age, and number of children contribute to the explanation of the observable differences. However, the empirical findings for MPs’ outside income have to be viewed with skepticism as the official disclosure rules do not create full income transparency.

A change of the functional income distribution and an unequal distribution of wealth lead to an unequal personal income distribution if low individual savings rates are widespread. This paper analyzes the attempts of CDU/CSU and SPD to correct this with new savings incentives and fund products. The proposals of both parties and the resulting statutory draft are however not convincing. There are better alternatives.

Support schemes for unemployed persons which aim at becoming selfemployed have been recently reformed several times. In 2003, the “start-up-subsidy” (Existenzgründungszuschuss) was added to the existing “bridging-allowance” ( ¨ Uberbrückungsgeld) and the two programs together led to a strong increase in the number of supported start-ups. In 2006 both instruments were merged to the “start-up allowance” (Gründungszuschuss). Since the bridging allowance has been evaluated as effective and efficient and the start-up-subsidy reached new target groups, the latest reform shows several shortcomings. First of all, an end of the start-up boom is to be expected with the newly attracted target groups not being reached anymore. Secondly, the design of the “start-up allowance” is suboptimal, where efficiency losses can be expected if participants aim at maximizing social transfers. First empirical evidence from data of 2007 supports most of these expectations.

In this article we use laboratory experiments to investigate (i) consumer acceptance of genetically modified (GM) foods in Germany, (ii) the effect of neutral information on consumer acceptance, and (iii) the existence and the extent of a hypothetical bias. Participants in our sample generally preferred non-GM over GM products and discounted GM food products by around 50%. We do not find a significant impact of neutral information on consumer valuation of GM food products. We show the existence of a hypothetical bias finding a significant upward bias in the valuations elicited in a hypothetical scenario.

Irrational behavior of individuals as well as social externalities can justify specific regulations towards tobacco consumption. The article argues that individual self-control problems have been largely neglected in economics, whereas externalities resulting from tobacco consumption are exaggerated. Given this result the article concludes that smoking bans are not an effective instrument to internalize the problems of tobacco consumption. Instead an increase of the tobacco tax would be a useful instrument to protect children and - to a lesser extent - lower-class households from excessive tobacco consumption.