Sommersemester 2022

04.05.2022Lukas Buchheim, TU Dortmund
 

Aggregate and Firm-Specific Information in Expectations

This paper develops a novel method to estimate the importance of aggregate and firm-specific information for firms' expectation formation. Based on a representative sample of German manufacturing firms, we document several new facts: First, firms are equally well informed about the aggregate and firm-specific components of their businesses, even though the firm-specific fluctuations are far more important for firms' businesses. Second, at times of crises firms expect a weakly higher share of the variation in firm-level outcomes, but uncertainty increases due to the overall increase in the dispersion. Third, firms heavily rely on information contained in observables, in particular regarding demand and production; information about prices are less important for forming expectations regarding business fluctuations in the short run. Fourth, the data provides evidence in favor of the law of iterated expectations. Fifth, firm-specific and overall information about future shocks quickly decays with longer forecast horizon.

18.05.2022Arne Strauss, WHU Vallendar
 

The value of flexible flight-to-route assignments in pre-tactical air traffic management

To inform current discussions on the future role of the network manager in air traffic management, we illustrate the value of flexible flight-to-route assignments by dynamically influencing airspace users’ choices by pricing decisions to make flexible options more attractive when needed; the overall aim is to reduce costs arising from re-routings, tactical delays, and penalties (for violating fairness and revenue neutrality conditions). This problem is structurally related to the last mile next day delivery problem but poses some special challenges.

08.06.2022Guido Voigt, Universität Hamburg
 

A Choice-Based Optimization Approach for Contracting in Supply Chains

We consider a supplier-buyer supply chain. The buyer holds private forecast information (high/low), and the supplier offers a menu of capacity reservation contracts to align incentives. We analyze how the menu of contracts should be adapted when lifting the assumptions that buyers act rationally and/or that buyers' utility is deterministic. We employ a novel choice-based optimization approach that integrates a multinomial logit model (capturing the buyer's contract choice behavior) with a mixed-integer nonlinear program. The choice-based optimization model can be solved with off-the-shelf solvers and is therefore ready to use by management. We further derive qualitative insights on how to adapt existing contracts in a numerical study. We show that cutting off low-demand buyers, reducing reservation fees in a specific manner and introducing more contract options may increase suppliers' and supply chains' performance.

22.06.2022Simon Reif, ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research
 

Effects of Introducing Prospective Payment on Length of Stay in Mental Health Care (Franziska Valder, Harald Tauchmann, Simon Reif)

While there is a large literature on the design of hospital reimbursement schemes for somatic health care, little is known on the effects of reimbursement for inpatient mental health care. In this paper, we study the introduction of a partly prospective payment scheme for inpatient mental health care in Germany. The new system - PEPP - features diagnosis-related reimbursement rates for each day a patient spends in the hospital that decrease over length of stay. Build and a simple model of provider behavior, we use data on the universe of hospital cases in Germany to examine two questions: first, we analyze which hospitals decide to voluntarily opt into prospective payment. Second, we examine the effect of prospective payment on length of stay. We find that more specialized hospitals with high average length of stay and higher occupancy rates select into the prospective scheme.  We then show that there are large reductions in length of stay due to PEPP. These reductions are mainly driven by changes in length of stay within diagnoses and not by the diagnosis distribution. We cannot find evidence for harmfulness of these reductions given that there are no effects on patient transfers or mortality.

29.06.2022Markus Reisinger, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
 

Sequencing Bilateral Negotiations with Externalities (joint with Johannes Münster)

In most bargaining situations with multiple parties, the negotiation sequence is crucial for the efficiency of outcomes and the parties' success. However, the driving forces behind the socially and privately optimal sequences are poorly understood. To study these issues, we consider a general framework of bilateral negotiations between a principal and two agents with bargaining externalities. We show that the agents' bargaining strengths are essential for the determination of the sequence. The surplus is highest if the principal negotiates with the stronger agent first, regardless of externalities being positive or negative. The principal always chooses the efficient sequence if externalities are negative. Instead, if externalities are positive, the principal often prefers to negotiate with the weaker agent first. We show that our results extend to a general number of agents, demonstrate that the sequence can be non-monotonic in the externalities, and provide conditions for simultaneous negotiations to be optimal.

06.07.2022Kerstin Grosch, Vienna University of Economics and Business
 

Closing the gender STEM gap -  A large-scale randomized-controlled trial in elementary schools

We examine individual-level determinants of interest in STEM and analyze if a digital web application for elementary-school children can increase children's STEM interest with a specific focus on narrowing the gender gap in STEM. Coupling a randomized-controlled trial with experimental lab and survey data, we can analyze the effect of the digital intervention and shed light on the mechanisms. We confirm the hypothesis that girls demonstrate a lower overall interest in STEM than boys. Moreover, girls are less competitive and exhibit less pronounced math confidence than boys at the baseline. Our treatment increases girls' interest in STEM and decreases the gender gap via an increase in STEM confidence and competitiveness. Our findings suggest that an easy-to-implement digital intervention has the potential to foster gender equality for young children and can contribute to a reduction of gender inequalities in the labor market such as occupational sorting and the gender wage gap later in life.  

13.07.2022Svenja Hippel, Universität Bonn
 

A laboratory experiment on fairness preferences for sharing losses in insolvency

In insolvency proceedings claimants are to receive awards from a shrunken pie. Arguably, organizing this distributional conflict is the most important task of insolvency law. We study in a computerized experiment the distributional preferences of insolvency claimants about how to allocate a liquidation value smaller than the sum of pre-insolvency claims. In particular, under the veil of ignorance we elicit preferences for four different distribution mechanisms: (1) the proportionality rule, (2) the constrained equal awards rule, (3) the constrained equal losses rule, and (4) the Talmud rule. While all four mechanisms capture egalitarian intuitions and may be subsumed under the pari passu principle, they do so in quite different ways. This raises the question of how these rules interact with peoples' fairness considerations. We find that under the veil of ignorance participants have the highest willingness-to-pay for the proportionality rule, followed by the constrained equal awards and the Talmud rule. Participants have the lowest willingness-to-pay for the constrained equal losses rule. If the veil is lifted, however, claimants tend to invest their endowment into risky projects that are governed by the rule that is most beneficial for them: small claimants tend to favor constrained equal losses and dislike constrained equal awards; large claimants exhibit the opposite pattern. Moreover, our evidence suggests that, especially for larger claimants and higher liquidation values, rank order preferences shift once the veil of ignorance is lifted. To the extent that preferences differ from the proportionality rule commonly employed in practice, our results raise questions about regulatory reform of insolvency law and similar institutional frameworks governing conflicting claims problems.