Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultäthttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/622024-03-28T19:03:35Z2024-03-28T19:03:35ZEssays in Applied MicroeconomicsEhrmantraut, Laura Helenehttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/114482024-03-28T09:18:12Z2024-03-28T00:00:00ZEssays in Applied Microeconomics
Ehrmantraut, Laura Helene
This thesis comprises three chapters, each serving as an independent research paper. Collectively, they all revolve around exploring individual decision making, with particular emphasis on the role of expectations and perceptions in the decision making process.
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The first chapter explores students' expectations about the returns to completing higher education and provides first evidence on perceived signaling and human capital effects. We elicit counterfactual labor market expectations for the hypothetical scenarios of leaving university with or without a degree certificate among a large and diverse sample of students at different stages of higher education. Our findings indicate substantial expected labor market returns from signaling. Over the expected course of career, we find lasting perceived education premia as well as evidence consistent with perceived employer learning.
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The second chapter answers the question: Why do employers seek to attract individuals with more education? We experimentally vary rates of master degree completion on applicant résumés to shift employer beliefs about candidates' productive traits. Our results confirm that a master's degree raises candidate desirability. Moreover, we find that master graduates outperform bachelor degree holders in terms of employer perceived cognitive and non-cognitive traits as well as subject matter expertise. Conversely, master dropouts are associated with weaker non-cognitive traits. Notably, these perceived traits account for up to 75% of candidate attractiveness. This paper thus provides causal evidence on the origins of the education premium.
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The third chapter investigates the attitudes towards paternalism in an incentivized laboratory experiment. We test if individuals are willing to give up money in order to remove a paternalistically motivated constraint that restricts their choice set in a decision under risk. We find that individuals are willing to give up money in almost half of their decisions in order to be able to make an unrestricted choice. Disentangling the intrinsic value from the instrumental value of freedom of choice, we observe positive intrinsic values of freedom of choice in about 30% of all decisions. Occurrence and magnitude of the intrinsic value of freedom of choice vary between individuals and across decision contexts, i.e., for different types of risks (gains versus losses, long shots versus 50-50), but merely by stake size.
2024-03-28T00:00:00ZEssays in Labor EconomicsSimon, Lenard Paulhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/113772024-02-29T16:32:27Z2024-02-29T00:00:00ZEssays in Labor Economics
Simon, Lenard Paul
As Western societies age, their working-age populations are declining, resulting in a scarcity of labor. Consequently, these societies face reduced production opportunities while shouldering an increasing burden of elderly care. This leads to governments encountering rising expenditures alongside a decreasing tax base. One potential avenue to mitigate this problem is by increasing the labor supply among the working-age population.
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In the canonical model of the labor market, an individual's labor supply is her optimal choice of working hours derived from the trade-off between consumption and leisure, given equilibrium wages and consumption prices. However, in reality, numerous institutional frictions impact labor supply as well, such as misaligned incentives, limited geographic mobility, and inadequate work-family compatibility, among others. Due to these frictions, individuals may choose to work fewer hours than what they would consider optimal when faced with a mere leisure-consumption trade-off. Hence, reducing these frictions could potentially expand the labor supply of the working-age population and, consequently, alleviate the prevailing scarcity of labor in Western societies today. This thesis consists of three independent chapters covering the causes and consequences of such frictions and how they can be eliminated with the help of policies.
2024-02-29T00:00:00ZEssays in Economic TheoryKreutzkamp, Sophie Alexandrahttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/113762024-02-29T16:02:19Z2024-02-29T00:00:00ZEssays in Economic Theory
Kreutzkamp, Sophie Alexandra
This dissertation consists of three self-contained essays in microeconomic theory and statistics. The first chapter contributes to the literature on information economics. It examines strategic information transmission in a sender-receiver game with endogenous learning. The second chapter on search and matching theory analyses a dynamic matching market in which match values increase over time, and agents have the option to rematch. The third chapter on cluster analysis deals with a constrained clustering model.
2024-02-29T00:00:00ZEssays in Applied Microeconomic TheoryCosentino, Melina Mariahttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/113302024-02-19T11:17:21Z2024-02-19T00:00:00ZEssays in Applied Microeconomic Theory
Cosentino, Melina Maria
This dissertation is composed of three self-contained chapters whose main objective lies in providing model-based explanations of and policy recommendations for "real-world" phenomena that attracted my attention throughout the doctoral studies. While the first chapter aims to assess the effect of negative preferences on political parties' behaviour, thereby providing an explanation for the rise of political extremism, the second and third chapters focus on policy recommendations: in Chapter 2, Philipp Hamelmann and I analyse a communication protocol that enhances information transmission between experts and a decision maker in the presence of a conflict of interest; Chapter 3 sheds light on (potential) adverse effects of climate policies and suggests procedures that enable regulators to avoid them.
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Antipartisanship---an explanation for extremism?, Chapter 1: In this chapter, I adapt the Hotelling-Downs model with three parties and add an "antipartisan" component: antipartisans vote for the party located furthest away from their most disliked party. While the standard game without antipartisanship and uniformly distributed voters has no pure-strategy equilibrium, the present model allows for equilibria with, depending on the share of antipartisan voters, either distinct moderate or extreme party-positions. This provides a theoretical explanation for phenomena such as those observed in Brazil in 2018: an exogenous increase in antipartisanship, followed by polarisation. I characterise the conditions under which a change in antipartisanship by itself can explain such comparative statics.
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Eliciting information from multiple experts via grouping, Chapter 2: This chapter is joint work with Philipp Hamelmann. We analyse a set-up in which a decision maker (DM) seeks to determine whether to adopt a new policy or maintain the status quo. To do so, she consults (finitely many) experts whose common interests differ significantly from those of the DM. As suggested by Wolinsky (2002)*, partial communication ("grouping mechanisms") among experts can---requiring neither transfers nor commitment---result in revelation of more information than full communication: by allowing for communication within groups of experts only and, hence, changing the events in which votes are pivotal, the DM may be able to manipulate experts' strategies to her advantage. We elaborate on this, inter alia, characterising optimal grouping mechanisms and conditions under which grouping can improve upon full communication.
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Climate clubs: adverse effects and how to avoid them, Chapter 3: This chapter revolves around the "G7 Climate Club" whose main objective lies in promoting the implementation of the Paris Agreement. One of the proposed measures is a reduction in the production of emission-intensive goods. Analysing imperfect competition in a market for such a good, I highlight risks of said intervention: a reduced production by club members may increase the total level of emissions. In the new equilibrium, non-members raise production---potentially offsetting reduced emissions in member countries. For some parametrisations, the club needs to increase, not decrease its production and emissions to minimise the aggregate emission level. I discuss (1) conditions under which there is a risk of such adverse effects and (2) analyse the optimal club production levels; both (1) and (2) are highly dependent on the exact market structure and may, hence, be unknown to the club. As a remedy, I propose interventions that are, for virtually all parametrisations, guaranteed to reduce emissions, not harm consumers and can, other than the optimal production levels, be implemented without detailed knowledge of the market structure.
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* Wolinsky, Asher. 2002. “Eliciting information from multiple experts.” Games and Economic Behavior, 41(1): 141 -- 160.
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