Department of Economics Working Paper Series, 290, 2019

The media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation in Germany

Theine, Hendrik

Abstract: Based on the political economy of the media perspective, this paper explores the media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation over the early 21st century (2000 to 2018) based on a large-scale corpus of seven German daily and weekly newspapers. Germany is a useful case study, being one of the most unequal countries in the Eurozone area in terms of wealth inequality. Drawing on text mining methods and corpus linguistics, it shows that wealth and inheritance taxation is a relatively infrequent topic over the entire period, with the exception of a few intense months of increased reporting. On the occasions that the media do report on the topic of wealth and inheritance taxation, it is mainly covered in terms of a political debate. This debate centres on the politics of a possible reform process and the connected difficulties of finding compromise between different actors, rather than focussing on the potential economic impact. Furthermore, this paper explores the power of agents (both on the organisational and individual level) as the primary definers of social reality. It shows that market-liberal and conservative organisations and economists dominate the news over social-democratic and left-wing ones. Overall, the findings indicate a hostile news coverage concerning the introduction of wealth taxation and the increase of inheritance tax.

The full paper is available under http://epub.wu.ac.at/7098/1/wp290.pdf

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Department of Economics Working Paper Series, 291, 2019

Dealing with Endogenous Shocks in Dynamic Friendship Network

Marchenko, Maria

Abstract: Different types of shocks, or the treatment of one of the players in a specific network, may influence not only the future performance of themselves but also affect their network connections. It is crucial to explore the behaviour of the whole network in response to such an event. This paper focuses on the cases of endogenously formed shock. The logic used in the peer effect literature is adopted to develop the dynamic model and accounts for the endogeneity of the shock. The model allows us to predict the endogenous part of the shock and use the remaining unexpected component to estimate the effect of the shock on the changes in the performance of network connections. The identification conditions for effect are derived, and the consistent estimation procedure is proposed.

The full paper is available under http://epub.wu.ac.at/7099/1/wp291.pdf

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Department of Economics Working Paper Series, 292, 2019

Endogenous Shocks in Social Networks: Exam Failures and Friends' Future Performance

Marchenko, Maria

Abstract: Exam failures of the students in a specific network may influence not only the future performance of the student but also all students from their friendship networks, affecting the overall cohort's performance. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how the whole network responses to failure. The difficulty of such analysis is incorporated in the probability of the failures being highly endogenous. In this paper, I am applying the novel identification and estimation approach to deal with such endogeneity. I am exploring the dynamic data on the students' networks in HSE, Nizhniy Novgorod. The results suggest that, on average, the exam failure of the friend have a negative effect on future performance.

The full paper is available under http://epub.wu.ac.at/7100/1/wp292.pdf

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Department of Economics Working Paper Series, 293, 2019

Effective Climate Policy Doesn’t Have to be Expensive

Gugler, Klaus; Haxhimusa, Adhurim; Liebensteiner, Mario

Abstract: We compare the effectiveness of different climate policies in terms of emissions abatement and costs in the British and German electricity markets. The two countries follow different climate policies, allowing us to compare the effectiveness of a relatively low EU ETS carbon price in Germany with a significantly higher carbon price due to a unilateral top-up tax (the Carbon Price Support) in the UK. We first estimate the emissions offsetting effects of carbon pricing and of subsidized wind and solar feed-in, and then derive the abatement costs of one tonne of CO2 for the different policies. We find that a reasonably high price for emissions is the most cost-effective climate policy, while subsidizing wind is preferable to subsidizing solar power. A carbon price of around € 35 is enough in the UK to induce vast short-run fuel switching between coal- and gas-fired power plants, leading to significant emissions abatement at low costs.

The full paper is available under http://epub.wu.ac.at/7166/1/wp293.pdf

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Department of Economics Working Paper Series, 294, 2019

Determinants of Fiscal Multipliers Revisited

Horvath, Roman; Kaszab, Lorant; Marsal, Ales; Rabitsch, Katrin

Abstract: We generalize a simple New Keynesian model and show that a flattening of the Phillips curve reduces the size of fiscal multipliers at the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate. The factors behind the flatting are consistent with micro- and macroeconomic empirical evidence: it is a result of, not a higher level of price rigidity, but an increase in the degree of strategic complementarity in price-setting -- invoked by the assumption of a specific instead of an economy-wide labour market, and decreasing instead of constant-returns-to-scale. In normal times, the efficacy of fiscal policy and resulting multipliers tends to be small because negative wealth effects crowd out consumption, and because monetary policy endogenously reacts to fiscally-driven increases in inflation and output by raising rates, offsetting part of the stimulus. In times of a binding ZLB and a fixed nominal rate, an increase in (expected) inflation instead lowers the real rate, leading to larger fiscal multipliers. Conditional on being in a ZLB-environment, under a flatter Phillips curve, increases in expected inflation are lower, so that fiscal multipliers at the ZLB tend to be lower. Finally, we also discuss the role of solution methods in determining the size of fiscal multipliers.

The full paper is available under http://epub.wu.ac.at/7167/1/wp294.pdf