Best Selling Books by Peter Huber

We study the reasons for differences in welfare benefit receipt between immigrants and natives in 16 EU countries using Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions of a Heckman model. Differences in welfare benefit receipt diminish or disappear altogether after controlling for differences in characteristics of the two groups. The largest part of this is explained by differences in benefit take-up rather than benefit levels conditional on benefit receipt. The characteristics contributing most to native-immigrant welfare wedges in contributory benefits are differences in age. For non-contributory benefits, differences in household size and composition are most important. Overall results thus suggest a limited capability of selective immigration policies to reduce welfare benefit receipt among immigrants.

Cross-border commuters from EU 15 countries have lower over- but higher under-education rates than non-commuters, for cross-border commuters from the new 12 EU member countries the opposite applies. Within-country commuters have lower over- but higher under-education rates than non-commuters in both regions.

We analyze the long-term impact of the resettlement of the Sudetenland after World War II on residential migration. This event involved expulsion of ethnic Germans and almost complete depopulation of an area of a country and its rapid resettlement by 2 million Czech inhabitants. Results based on nearest neighbor matching and regression discontinuity design show a higher population churn in resettled areas that continues today. The populations in resettled areas and in the remainder of the country share similar values and do not differ statistically in terms of their propensity to give donations, attend social events, and participate in voluntary work. However, we observe that resettled settlements have fewer local club memberships, lower turnout in municipal elections, and less frequently organized social events. This finding indicates substantially lower local social capital in the resettled settlements that is likely to have caused higher residential migration. This explanation is consistent with theoretical models of the impact of social capital on migration decisions.

Decisions-makers in firms are expected to use perceived rather than actual tax rates and hence their decisions can be substantially biased by misperception. We quantify firms'' misperception of their average tax rate (ATR) and marginal tax rate (MTR) and identify drivers of this tax rate misperception. Using survey data on German firms, we find that the share of firms considerably misperceiving their ATR and MTR exceeds 65% and 57% respectively. Further, we illustrate firms'' impaired comprehension of the tax schedule reflected by the relation between ATR and MTR. We find sole proprietorships and partnerships on average considerably overestimate their ATR anchoring at the top marginal tax rate. While corporations show no uniform tax misperception patterns for retained profits, they tend to strongly underestimate ATRs and MTRs on distributed profits. Irrespective of the legal form, we find misperception is mainly driven by tax regime complexity, lack of tax knowledge and dissatisfaction with the tax system. Surprisingly, even though many firms report using the ATR instead of the appropriate MTR in their investment and financing decisions, which suggests that they underestimate their tax burden, this bias is partially attenuated by their ATR misperception. Overall, our findings demonstrate that policymakers and researchers can benefit from incorporating firms'' tax rate misperception when estimating firms'' tax response and evaluating tax policies.

We study whether the positive effects of homeownership on political participation and social capital, found in developed market economies, extend to post-communist countries. We find that homeownership is strongly related to higher participation in local-level and national elections. In post-communist countries, homeownership is also related to higher social trust. However, the positive association between homeownership and volunteering found in developed market economies does not extend to post-communist countries. Together, our results corroborate that homeownership is associated with positive social benefits. However, these effects are highly heterogeneous and context-dependent.

I describe the extent and structure of cross-border commuting in the EU 27 to show that this is important only in a small number of border regions with strong linguistic, historic or institutional ties. Cross-border commuters are mostly medium skilled, male manufacturing workers, who have higher over- but lower under-education rates than non-commuters, internal commuters and established migrants. These findings can mostly be attributed to cross-border commuters from the 12 new EU member countries. Cross-border commuters from the EU 15 have higher under- and lower over-education rates than non-commuters.

We empirically analyze the impact of relative deprivation on the intended duration of stay of potential cross-border commuters and migrants. A theoretical model lends support to the hypothesis that deprivation affects the intended duration of stay of migrants in a U-shaped fashion, but does not affect potential commuters. Empirical evidence from one of the most densely populated border regions of the EU confirms both these hypotheses. These results are robust over different estimation methods and apply both when measuring deprivation relative to friends and acquaintances as well as relative to the population residing in a region.

The experiences of 259 regions in 21 European countries with within country GDP per capita and labour productivity growth suggest that variables associated with proactive, growth oriented strategies are consistently more important predictors of successful regional development than variables related to austerity for a range of measures of successful development. Since regions are the only historical examples of restructuring in currency unions, we therefore also argue for a more growth oriented strategy to solve the problems of the European periphery and outline some features of such a strategy.

We investigate whether the dependence of immigrants on welfare benefits leads to opposition to further immigration by natives and immigrants in a pooled cross-section of 21 European countries for the 2004-2010 period. Explicitly controlling for the dependence of immigrants and natives on benefits we find that higher benefit take-up rates among immigrants than among natives lead to less favourable attitudes of natives towards immigration. Interestingly, we do not find similar stylised facts for immigrants'' attitudes towards immigration.

Adventure Education (AE), which has over one-half of a century of history in the United States, has traditionally relied on a combination of components to achieve its objectives. The use of backcountry, or Wilderness settings, traveling with a minimum amount of technology, and the necessity of participants to rely upon themselves and others in unfamiliar surroundings, can create experiences that often have lasting impressions on the people who partake in these adventures. This study examines the use of portable technologies within AE for safety, and educational objectives, in order to understand how these devices might impact the future of AE.

I analyze the skill and age structure of commuters in 14 EU countries. Theory implies that commuters can be either more or less able than stayers, but are always less able than migrants and that they are also always older than migrants but younger than stayers. Empirically all types of commuters are younger and have higher education than non-commuters. Internal commuters are better educated and younger than cross-border commuters, education decreases while age increases with distance commuted and recent migrants are younger but also more highly educated than commuters.