Kiel Institute for the World Economy

About: Kiel Institute for the World Economy is a facility organization based out in Kiel, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Foreign direct investment & Productivity. The organization has 318 authors who have published 1909 publications receiving 42832 citations. The organization is also known as: Institut für Weltwirtschaft an der Universität Kiel.

Siblings’ interaction in migration decisions: who provides for the elderly left behind?

Abstract: In most poor countries, with high emigration rates, elderly people are dependent on their children for the provision of care and income. This paper is the first to explicitly model and estimate social interaction between siblings’ migration decisions in such settings. The interaction consists of two effects with opposite signs; a chain migration effect that can cause traditional caregiving structures to break down and an opposing specialization effect that increases family members’ incentives to remain at home and provide care when their siblings migrate. The estimates for Moldova, one of the countries with the highest emigration rates in the world, indicate that siblings’ interaction strongly decreases their equilibrium emigration rates. Siblings’ interaction is found to increase in line with the incentives that are assumed in the model. Hence, the paper provides evidence of the robustness of families’ informal security arrangements to large-scale emigration and has important implications for policies that aim at the population left behind.

Cooperation, Motivation and Social Balance

Abstract: This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of "multi-directedness", whereby people's preferences depend on their psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives. Different motives may be activated by different social settings. Inter-individual differences in dispositional types affect the responsiveness of people's motives to their social settings. The evolution of these dispositional types is driven by changes in the frequencies of social settings. In this context, economic policies can influence economic decisions not merely by modifying incentives operating through given preferences, but also by influencing people's motives (thereby changing their preferences) and by changing the distribution of dispositional types in the population (thereby changing their motivational responsiveness to social settings).

Subsidies and Exports in Germany. First Evidence from Enterprise Panel Data

Abstract: We use newly available representative panel data for manufacturing enterprises in West and East Germany to investigate the link between production-related subsidies and exports. We report that only a small fraction of enterprises is subsidized, and that exports and subsidies are positively related. Using a matching approach to investigate the causal effect of subsidies on export activities we find no impact of subsidies on the probability to start exporting, and only weak evidence for an impact of subsidies on the share of exports in total sales in West Germany but no evidence in East Germany. JEL Classifications: F13, F14, H29

Regional Inflation Persistence: Evidence from Italy

Abstract: Vaona A. and Ascari G. Regional inflation persistence: evidence from Italy, Regional Studies. Regional patterns of inflation persistence have received attention only at the level of European Monetary Union member states. However, economic disparities within European Monetary Union member states are an equally important policy issue. This paper considers a country with a large regional divide – Italy – at a fine level of territorial disaggregation (NUTS-3). It is shown that economically backward regions display greater inflation persistence. Moreover, higher persistence is linked to a lower degree of competitiveness in the retail sector. Finally, the inflation persistence at the national level does not present any geographical aggregation bias, because it equals the mean of inflation persistence of provincial data. Vaona A. et Ascari G. La continuite de l'inflation regionale: des preuves provenant de l'Italie, Regional Studies. C'est seulement par rapport aux pays-membres de la zone euro que la distributio...