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This paper analyses the effect of offshoring (i.e., the relocation of activities previously performed in-house to foreign countries) on various firm outcomes (domestic employment, production, and productivity). It uses data from the International Sourcing Survey (ISS) 2017 for Germany, linked to other firm level data such as business register and ITGS data. First, we find that offshoring is a rare event: In the sample of firms with 50 or more persons employed, only about 3% of manufacturing firms and 1% of business service firms have performed offshoring in the period 2014-2016. Second, difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimates reveal a negative effect of offshoring on domestic employment and production. Most of this negative effect is not because the offshoring firms shrink, but rather because they don't grow as fast as the non-offshoring firms. We further decompose the underlying employment dynamics by using direct survey evidence on how many jobs the firms destroyed/created due to offshoring. Moreover, we do not find an effect on labour productivity, since the negative effect on domestic employment and production are more or less of the same size. Third, the German data confirm previous findings for Denmark that offshoring is associated with an increase in the share of 'produced goods imports', i.e. offshoring firms increase their imports for the same goods they continue to produce domestically. In contrast, it is not the case that offshoring firms increase the share of intermediate goods imports (a commonly used proxy for offshoring), as defined by the BEC Rev. 5 classification.

Main description: Der immensen Bedeutung der Sozialversicherung trägt das Grundgesetz durch ein spezifisches Kompetenzengefüge hinsichtlich Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Organisation sowie Lastenverteilung Rechnung. Dezidiert untersucht Markus Zimmermann diesen durch Art. 74 Abs. 1 Nr. 12, Art. 87 Abs. 2 und Art. 120 Abs. 1 S. 4 gezogenen Verfassungsrahmen und beleuchtet zudem denjenigen für soziale Absicherung durch die Privatversicherung.Welche sind die konstituierenden Strukturelemente des Verfassungsbegriffs "Sozialversicherung"? Worin liegt die rechtliche Bedeutung des Versicherungs-, Äquivalenz- oder Solidarprinzips? Wäre eine "Bürgerversicherung" noch kompetenzgemäß? Wie weit können der Privatversicherung Elemente einer Sozialversicherung auferlegt werden?Das umfassende Werk beantwortet systematisch diese und andere Fragen und leistet einen elementaren Beitrag zu den Grundlagen der Sozialversicherung wie auch der Privatversicherung. Vor dem Hintergrund anhaltender Reformdiskussionen bietet es zudem einen unverzichtbaren Leitfaden für künftige Aus- und Umgestaltungen der sozialen Sicherungssysteme.

We study the importance of intangible capital (R&D, software, patents) for the measurement of productivity using firm-level panel data from German manufacturing. We first document a number of facts on the evolution of intangible investment over time, and its distribution across firms. Aggregate intangible investment increased over time. However, the distribution of intangible investment, even more so than that of physical investment, is heavily right-skewed, with many firms investing nothing or little, and a few firms having very large intensities. Intangible investment is also lumpy. Firms that invest more intensively in intangibles (per capita or as sales share) also tend to be more productive. In a second step, we estimate production functions with and without intangible capital using recent control function approaches to account for the simultaneity of input choice and unobserved productivity shocks. We find a positive output elasticity for research and development (R&D) and, to a lesser extent, software and patent investment. Moreover, the production function estimates show substantial heterogeneity in the output elasticities across industries and firms. While intangible capital has small effects for firms with low intangible intensity, there are strong positive effects for high-intensity firms. Finally, including intangibles in a gross output production function reduces productivity dispersion (measured by the 90-10 decile range) on average by 3%, in some industries as much as nearly 9%.

Abstract
The trend of rising income inequality in Germany since the mid-1990s is strongly amplified when considering income after housing expenditure. The income share of housing expenditure rose disproportionally for the bottom income quintile and fell for the top quintile. Factors contributing to these trends include declining relative costs of homeownership versus renting, changes in household structure, declining real incomes for low-income households and residential mobility towards larger cities. Younger cohorts spend more on housing and save less than older cohorts did at the same age, which will affect future wealth accumulation, particularly at the bottom of the income distribution.