Suchergebnisse

The CFS survey covers individual situations of banks and other companies of the financial sector during the financial crisis. This provides a rare possibility to analyze appraisals, expectations and forecast errors of the core sector of the recent turmoil. Following standard ways of aggregating individual survey data, we first present and introduce the CFS survey by comparing CFS indicators of confidence and predicted confidence to ifo and ZEW indicators. The major contribution is the analysis of several indicators of uncertainty. In addition to well established concepts, we introduce innovative measures based on the skewness of forecast errors and on the share of 'no response' replies. Results show that uncertainty indicators fit quite well with pattern of real and financial time series of the time period 2007 to 2010.

Based on a "theoretical" framework on custodial and non-custodial sentencing, the paper provides econometric tests on the effectiveness of police, public prosecution and courts. Using a unique dataset covering German states for the period 1977-2001, a comprehensive system of criminal prosecution indicators is derived and subsequently related to the incidence of aggravated assault by young offenders using panel-econometrics. Empirical evidence suggests that the criminal policy of diversion failed as increasing shares of dismissals by prosecutors and judges enhance crime rates in Germany. Crime is significantly deterred by higher clearance and conviction rates, while the effects of indicators representing type (fine, probation, imprisonment) and severity (length of prison sentence, size of fine) of punishment are often small and insignificant.

In this paper data from a survey of 1,771 inmates conducted in 31 German prisons provide microeconometric evidence on the relationship between individual anticipated labour market opportunities and the perceived probability of future recidivism. Results show that inmates with poor labour market prospects expect a significantly higher rate of future recidivism. Having a closer look at subgroups of prisoners reveals that drug and alcohol addiction cause adverse effects. Thus, improving prisoner health care by installing effective anti-drug programmes would be one of the most effective measures against crime.

The peristence of European unemployment stands in striking contrast to the cyclical pattern of unemployment in the US. Many people attribute the rise in European unemployment to increased imbalances between the pattern of labour demand and supply - in other words, to greater mismatch, but existing mismatch indicators do not support this view. However, the obvious inference is not legitimate because the evidence is based on trended data, and thus gives rise to spurious statistical results. To get around the problem, the author uses the dynamic flow approach to structural unemployment and disaggregated data. The reader will find new results on "non-spurious" mismatch tendencies, occupational reallocation, the matching of apprentices, and the importance of matching and mobility for wage differentials

Genau wie die Sorge den Arbeitsplatz zu verlieren oder schwer zu erkranken, gehört auch die Furcht, Opfer einer Straftat zu werden, zu den größten Ängsten der Deutschen. Wohlstandsindikatoren, die als Alternative zum BIP diskutiert werden, beinhalten daher nicht nur Arbeitslosigkeit und den Gesundheitszustand einer Nation, sondern auch das Ausmaß an Kriminalität. Leider ist die hierzu bisher verfügbare Information eher irreführend. Politik und Medien interpretieren Kriminalitätsentwicklungen anhand der Gesamtzahl polizeilich bekanntgewordener Straftaten und heben hier und da aktuelle Einzeltrends, wie etwa zu Einbruch oder Internetkriminalität, besonders hervor. Damit ergibt sich jedoch kein Gesamtbild der Situation, insbesondere nicht zum gesamten Schaden bzw. zu den durch Kriminalität entstehenden volkswirtschaftlichen Kosten. Dieser Aufsatz zeigt, dass die einfache Anwendung des bekannten Laspeyres-Mengenindex eine Möglichkeit darstellt, eine Interpretation der Kriminalitätsentwicklung jenseits der üblichen Betrachtung von Fallzahlen zu erlauben. In den Ausführungen werden die Datenerfordernisse thematisiert, wobei besonders auf die Messung der Kosten der Kriminalität und auf die Frage des Dunkelfelds eingegangen wird. Exemplarische Berechnungen für die Entwicklung des Schwereindex seit 1993 zeigen, dass eine Interpretation von Kriminalitätsentwicklungen extrem irreführend sein kann, wenn man allein auf die Gesamtzahl der Fälle, nicht aber auf die Schwere der Delikte und das Ausmaß des Dunkelfelds abstellt.

This paper contributes to the literature on specific deterrence by addressing the issue of selecting adolescents into adult and juvenile law systems. In Germany, different from the U.S. and most other countries, turning a critical cutoff age does not cause a sharp discontinuity from juvenile to adult penal law, but rather implies a shift to a discretionary system of both adult and juvenile law, dependent on the courts' impression of moral and mental personal development of the adolescent at the time of the act. The German legal system draws the line of adulthood at some fuzzy age interval between 18 and 21, which is well above the thresholds prevailing in the U.S. (16 to 18 years, state specific) and other countries. Thus, the German evidence entails some external evidence to the previous literature mostly relying on U.S. data. Based on a unique inmate survey and Two-Equation Models controlling for selectivity problems, results show that application of adult criminal law instead of juvenile penal law decreases expected recidivism of adolescents. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

This paper tests predictions of a structural, augmented supply-of-offenders model regarding the relative effects of police, public prosecution and courts, respectively, on crime. Using detailed data on the different stages of the criminal prosecution process in Germany, empirical evidence suggests that public prosecutors and their influence on the probability of conviction play a major role in explaining the variation of crime rates, while the impact of the severity of punishment is small and insignificant.

"Dieser Aufsatz geht der Frage nach, ob der Nutzen des Strafvollzugs die Kosten der Sicherung und Resozialisierung von Straftätern überschreitet oder ob alternative, haftvermeidende Strategien vorzuziehen sind." (Autorenreferat)