Sebastian Braun

Telling the Truth May Not Pay Off: An Empirical Study of Centralized University Admissions in Germany

Abstract Matching university places to students is not as clear cut or as straightforward as it ought to be. By investigating the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions in medicine and related subjects, we show that a procedure designed to give an advantage to students with excellent school grades actually harms them. The reason is that the three-step process employed by the clearinghouse is a complicated mechanism in which many students fail to grasp the strategic aspects involved. The mechanism is based on quotas and consists of three procedures that are administered sequentially, one for each quota. Using the complete data set of the central clearinghouse, we show that the matching can be improved for around 20% of the excellent students while making a relatively small percentage of all other students worse off.

The Economic Integration of Forced Migrants: Evidence for Post-War Germany

The flight and expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe during and after World War II constitutes one of the largest forced population movements in history. We analyze the economic integration of these forced migrants and their offspring in West Germany. The empirical results suggest that even a quarter of a century after displacement, first generation migrants and native West Germans that were comparable before the war perform strikingly different. Migrants have substantially lower incomes and are less likely to own a house or to be self-employed. Displaced agricultural workers, however, have significantly higher incomes. This income gain can be explained by faster transitions out of low-paid agricultural work. Differences in the labor market performance of second generation migrants resemble those of the first generation. We also find that displacement considerably weakens the intergenerational transmission of human capital between fathers and children, especially at the lower tail of the skill distribution.

Trade and Investment Effects of Forced Labour: An Empirical Assessment

A lift attached to a truck has a tail gate supported by at least one hydraulic lift and at least one tilt cylinder for respectively lifting the tail gate as a whole and rotating it for opening and closing. A control system for moving such a tail gate up and down as a whole and rotating it to open and close it is provided with a power unit including a hydraulic pump, an electric motor for the hydraulic pump, and a plurality of valves for selectably allowing or not allowing transport of a hydraulic liquid by the hydraulic pump into the hydraulic cylinders, a sensor for measuring the slope angle of the tail gate, external switches, and a controller which serves to transmit output signals to the motor and to the valves in response to input signals from the sensor and the external switches and is capable of stopping rotary motion of the tail gate at a horizontal position irrespective of the slope of the vehicle and starting and stopping the rotary motion of the tail gate gradually.

National Sentiment and Economic Behavior Evidence From Online Betting on European Football

National sentiment can have major implications for individual consumption and investment choices but has been researched little by economists. This article studies how national sentiment in the form of a perception or loyalty bias of bettors may affect pricing patterns on national wagering markets for European football. The authors show theoretically that both biases can be profitably exploited by domestic bookmakers through price adjustment. Analyzing empirically a unique data set of betting odds from online bookmakers in Europe, the authors find evidence of systematic biases in the pricing of own national teams, deviations that can be explained by the aforementioned two biases.

The Employment Effects of Immigration: Evidence from the Mass Arrival of German Expellees in Postwar Germany

This paper studies the employment effects of the influx of millions of German expellees to West Germany after World War II. The expellees were forced to relocate to post-war Germany. They represented a complete cross-section of society, were close substitutes to the native West German population, and were very unevenly distributed across labor market segments in West Germany. We find a substantial negative effect of expellee inflows on native employment. The effect was, however, limited to labor market segments with very high inflow rates. IV regressions that exploit variation in geographical proximity and in pre-war occupations confirm the OLS results.

Export Structure, FDI and Child Labour

The paper addresses the linkage between certain aspects of the increasing economic integration of world markets and the level of child labour. We empirically examine, first, the often-cited conventional wisdom that multinational enterprises invest in countries where the extent of child labour is relatively high and, second, the concern that countries may gain an unfair comparative advantage in trade by using child labour. The results indicate that multinationals are highly sensitive with respect to the location of their transplants and prefer countries with lower levels of child labour. The opposite outcome applies to child labour and comparative advantage in labour-intensive goods, where we find a statistically significant positive relationship. Based on these results, the paper also discusses some policy implications on how to deal with child labour effectively.

The Transmission of Inequality Across Multiple Generations: Testing Recent Theories with Evidence from Germany

This article shows that across multiple generations, the persistence of occupational and educational attainment in Germany is larger than estimates from two generations suggest. We consider two recent interpretations. First, we assess Gregory Clarks hypotheses that the true rate of intergenerational persistence is higher than the observed rate, as high as 0.75, and time†invariant. Our evidence supports the first but not the other two hypotheses. Second, we test for independent effects of grandparents. We show that the coefficient on grandparent status is positive in a wide class of Markovian models and present evidence against its causal interpretation.

Distant Event, Local Effects? Fukushima and the German Housing Market

The Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan in March 2011 caused a fundamental change in Germanys energy policy which led to the immediate shut down of nearly half of its nuclear power plants. This paper uses data from Germanys largest internet platform for real estate to investigate the effect of Fukushima on the German housing market. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that Fukushima reduced house prices near nuclear power plants that were in operation before Fukushima by almost 6%. House prices near sites that were shut down right after the accident even fell by 10.8%. Our results suggest that economic reasons are of prime importance for the observed fall in house prices near nuclear power plants.

Should Trade Unions Welcome Foreign Investors? First evidence from Danish Matched Employer-Employee Data

While foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely believed to have an adverse effect on the bargaining power of unions and hence on union wages, little empirical research has been done to substantiate this conjecture. The present paper aims at filling this gap by analysing the effect of foreign ownership on the union wage premium in Denmark. Using matched employer-employee data, the positive effect of plant level unionisation on wages is found to vanish in foreign-owned firm.

Against All Odds? National Sentiment and Wagering on European Football

This paper studies how national sentiment in the form of either a perception or a loyalty bias of bettors may affect pricing patterns on national wagering markets for international sport events. We show theoretically that both biases can be profitably exploited by bookmakers by way of price adjustment (odds shading). The former bias induces bookmakers to shade odds against the domestic team, the latter to adjust them in a way that depends on the demand elasticity of bettors for their national favorite. Analyzing empirically a unique data set of betting quotas from online bookmakers in twelve European countries for qualification games to the UEFA Euro 2008, we find evidence for systematic biases in the pricing of own national teams in the odds for win offered across countries. Variations in the sign and magnitude of these deviations can be explained by differences across countries in the respective strengths of the perception and loyalty biases among domestic bettors.