Working Paper Series

Robert Reed / Lukas Röseler / Marianne Saam / Lukas Wallrich  (2025): No Room at the Inn? The Case for Specialized Replication Journals (PDF)

Replications are widely recognized as essential to the self-correcting nature of science. Interest in replication studies has grown markedly in both economics and psychology over the past decade. Nevertheless, they still represent a very small share of total publications. We discuss why most journals in economics and psychology do not regularly publish replications and which role replication journals can play in creating a home for replications that is sustainable, credible, and visible.

Andreas Nicklisch / Olaf Bock / Thomas Lauer (2025): Repository Data Transfers: Incentives, Free-Riding and Goodwill among Economists  (PDF)

We analyse the availability of source data of experimental data in a sample of highly respected economic journals. We test whether publication strategies of journals have an effect for the publication of data. The results for the sample of journals we investigated indicate a large variety of publication patterns. Even mandatory publication of experimental data leads in many cases to sources which are only available upon request. Thus, transparency and replicability of experimental results currently depend to a large extend on the good will of the journals and the stringency by which editors follow the research data availability policies.

Max Weinig / Ulrich Fritsche (2024): Going viral: Inflation Narratives and the Macroeconomy (PDF)

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the analysis of narratives in macroeconomic research. Our paper contributes to this research by proposing a way to identify and extract economic narratives from media reports. Therefore, this paper applies state-of-the-art bag-of-words text analysis methods to a large news corpus covering five years of news coverage in combination with results from a survey study on recent inflation narratives (Andre et al., 2023) in the US. This approach enables us to measure the prevalence and spread of inflation narratives over time and to examine the role of these narratives in aggregate macroeconomic expectations. Using Granger causality tests and local projections, we provide empirical evidence on the dynamics between inflation narratives and inflation expectations. Moreover, the paper highlights the vast heterogeneity across shortterm and mid-term inflation expectations as well as socioeconomic groups.

Tetiana Dovbischuk (2024): Mitigating Urban Stress Through Nature-Based Solutions: Green Spaces in Relocation Decision-Making (PDF)

As urbanization progresses, urban stress has become an increasingly prominent concern, diminishing city residents’ well-being and overall quality of life. Responding to these challenges, nature-based solutions involving urban greenery have emerged as potential stress mitigators, providing respite from the demands of urban life. This paper examines the role of urban green spaces as compensatory strategies for common urban stressors, such as traffic noise annoyance at home, home overcrowding, and the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, in city dwellers’ decision-making processes for residential relocations. The data for the analysis are drawn from a primary survey in two German cities, Cologne and Hamburg, encompassing 1,846 randomly selected respondents.
The findings suggest that, particularly in the initial stages of considering relocation, individuals use urban green spaces to compensate for stressful urban living conditions. These green space compensation strategies may prevent individuals from progressing to subsequent stages of relocation decision-making. Recognizing the importance of urban green spaces in mitigating urban stress not only enhances the wellbeing of city dwellers but also improves understanding of effective strategies for planning resilient cities.

Christina Heike Maaß (2024): Overestimated Labor Force Potential in Germany - The Role of Flexible Working Time Models (PDF)

With economists suggesting to increase labor market participation to counter demographic changes and skills shortages, contrary to the recently increased awareness of work-life balance, the question arises as to how much of the previously unexploited labor supply can actually be activated and pushed into full-time positions. In this paper, we empirically analyze the intentions of the underemployed and inactive individuals based on a sound theoretical analysis. By firstly exploring responses to the EU Labor Force Survey and the German microcensus, we find changes in labor supply behavior over time. The results are corroborated and extended by novel search data from Google Trends, which provide further details on the increasing preferences for fewer working hours and part-time work implicitly expressed via the search engine. We identify the overestimation of the labor force potential in Germany to be substantial and realistically assume a limited potential to activate the unexploited workforce.

Johanna Krenz / Stylianos Tsiaras (2024): Household Inequality and the Transmission of QE in Euro Area Countries (PDF)

We estimate the dynamic effects of a high-frequency identified unionwide quantitative easing (QE) shock on real GDP, inflation and unemployment in all euro area countries. We document that the effects of QE are very heterogenous across countries as regards size, significance and timing, especially with respect to GDP and unemployment. Exploiting the panel structure of our dataset, we show that the effect of QE on real GDP is amplified by a larger fraction of liquidity-constrained households in a country. The latter result seems to be driven by the general equilibrium impact of QE on unemployment.

Rebecca Endtricht (2024): Die Komplexität kollektiver Identitäten - Konzeptionelles Modell und explorative Analysen zur Bestimmung von Identitätsmustern in der deutschen Gesellschaft (PDF)

Zusammenfassung: Kollektive Identitäten sind ein zentraler Bestandteil des menschlichen Zusammenlebens. Sie basieren auf gemeinsamen Werten, Traditionen, Normen und Erfahrungen von Gruppen, die sowohl die individuelle Selbstwahrnehmung als auch zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen prägen. Im Kontext der Globalisierung ist darüber hinaus die Multidimensionalität kollektiver Identitäten entscheidend für das Verständnis sozialer Einstellungen. Menschen werden mit vielfältigen Gruppen konfrontiert und können sich mit diesen identifizieren oder sie ablehnen. Jedoch beziehen nur wenige empirische Studien das gesamte Spektrum kollektiver Identitäten in ihre Untersuchungen ein. In der vorliegenden Arbeit soll daher ein Ansatz vorgestellt werden, der die Vielfalt sozialer Gruppen berücksichtigt. Anhand von Daten einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsumfrage aus dem Jahr 2022 (N = 4.319 Erwachsene ab 18 Jahren in Deutschland) werden zehn Dimensionen der kollektiven Identität (Ethnie/Nationalität, Hautfarbe, Sprache, Geschlecht, Religion, Politik, Lebensregion, deutsche Kultur, europäische Kultur, Weltbürgertum) gemeinsam betrachtet. Es wird zunächst ein Modell aufgestellt, das die Identitäten anhand etablierter Werteforschung in einen normativen Wertebereich einordnet. Anhand latenter Klassenanalysen werden sodann vier unterschiedliche Identitätsmuster identifiziert und auf Basis ihrer Inhalte und Sozialstruktur interpretiert. Die Ergebnisse werden darauf aufbauend für drei gesellschaftliche Teilgruppen – Personen mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund sowie Personen mit muslimischer religiöser Zugehörigkeit – durchgeführt und die Ergebnisse verglichen. Die Untersuchung zielt darauf ab, ein tieferes Verständnis der Multidimensionalität kollektiver Identitäten und ihrer Auswirkungen auf gesellschaftliche Dynamiken zu fördern, indem sie die Wertestruktur von Identitätsmustern mit den Einstellungen von Individuen verknüpft. Die Anwendbarkeit und das empirische sowie analytische Potenzial kollektiver Identitätsmuster für die Einstellungs- und Werteforschung werden diskutiert.

Christoph van Dülmen / Katharina Manderscheid (2024): Die Nutzer*innenperspektive auf On-Demand-Mobilität in ländlichen Räumen (PDF).

Kurzbeschreibung: Es handelt sich um ein WP, das die Ergebnisse eines Lehrforschungsseminars zu On-Demand-Mobilität in Rendsburg als Teil eines Drittmittelprojektes darstellt.

Die Veranstaltung wurde geleitet von Katharina Manderscheid, Projektleiterin, und Christoph van Dülmen, wissenschaftlicher Projektbearbeiter des Begleitforschungsprojektes, das im Fachgebiet Soziologie des Fachbereichs Sozialökonomie angesiedelt ist. Thematische Schwerpunkte der studentischen Projekte waren die Herausarbeitung unterschiedlicher Formen des Zugangs zu remo, die Rolle von remo im Zusammenhang von finanzieller Armut und sozialer Teilhabe, die milieuspezifische Verbreitung von ODR, die Bedeutung von remo für das subjektive Sicherheitsempfinden sowie der mögliche Einfluss von remo im Komplex von Alkoholkonsum und Verkehrsteilnahme.
Zunächst aber stellen wir den Forschungsgegenstand remo vor (02), gehen auf den Stand der Forschung zu On-Demand-Verkehren ein (03) und skizzieren die theoretische Basis (04), insbesondere die sozialwissenschaftliche Mobilitätsforschung und ein Verständnis von sozialen Innovationen. In Kapitel 05 stellen wir das methodische Vorgehen gruppenprojektübergreifend und in Kapitel 06 den Entstehungskontext genauer vor. Kapitel 07 beinhaltet dann die studentischen Projekte, die je eigene Fragestellungen und Zugänge verfolgen. In Kapitel 08 ziehen wir ein Fazit, einmal zum Lehrforschungsprojekt, zum anderen für die Praxis.

Johanna Krenz (2023): Financial Integration and International Shock Transmission – The Terms-of-Trade Effect (PDF).

Abstract: What are the effects of financial integration on global comovement? Using a standard two-country DSGE model, I show that in response to country-specific supply shocks higher exposure to foreign assets leads to lower cross-country output correlations, while the opposite is true for country-specific demand shocks. I argue that an important, yet overlooked, transmission channel originates in the interplay between financial integration and terms of trade movements in response to the shocks hitting the economy. The transmission channel is independent of whether the agents who hold the foreign assets are financially constrained or not.

Johanna Krenz / Akhilesh K Verma (2023): A leaky pipeline - Macroprudential policy shocks, non-bank financial intermediation and systemic risk in Europe (PDF).

Abstract: How does macroprudential regulation affect financial stability in the presence of non-bank financial intermediaries? We estimate the contributions of traditional banks vis-`a-vis nonbank financial intermediaries to changes in systemic risk – measured as ΔCoVaR – after macroprudential policy shocks in European countries. We find that while tighter macroprudential regulation, generally, decreases systemic risk among traditional banks, it has the opposite effect on systemic risk in the non-bank financial intermediation sector. For some types of regulations, the latter effect is even stronger than the former, indicating that macroprudential tightening increases systemic risk in the entire financial system, through leakages between the traditional and the non-bank financial intermediation sectors.

Gabi Waldhof / Ulrich Fritsche (2023): Understanding Moral Narratives as Drivers of Polarization about Genetically Engineered Crops (PDF)

Abstract: Motivated by an increasing interest in narratives in economics, we investigated the relevance of moral concerns in narratives for policy preferences. Specifically, taking the German debate about genetic engineering of foods (GE) as an example, we conducted a representative online survey in Germany to identify common narratives, their moral content, and related subjective images about GE. In line with previous research, we found that two-thirds of respondents choose to reject GE. Moreover, based on Moral Foundations Theory, we found that GE opponents much more frequently addressed the moral foundations Care and Sanctity in their stated narratives about GE. GE supporters most frequently addressed the moral foundation Loyalty in their stated narratives about GE. Also, subjective images about GE were much more negative among opponents than among supporters. However, the subjective images of opponents and supporters were in striking accordance about GE being a deviation from what is considered normal. Both sides overwhelmingly described images related to the enhancement of plants, as something strange, supersized, or artificial. In a linear regression model, we showed that the moral content of narratives about GE is indeed significantly related to the attitude towards this technology. In total, the findings suggest that the moral content of narratives is highly relevant for policy preferences, and should thus be considered in science communication and policymaking.