Das Ziel dynamischer Mikrosimulationen ist es, die Entwicklung von Systemen über das Verhalten der einzelnen enthaltenen Bestandteile zu simulieren, um umfassende szenariobasierte Analysen zu ermöglichen. Im Bereich der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften wird der Fokus üblicherweise auf Populationen bestehend aus Personen und Haushalten gelegt. Da politische und wirtschaftliche Entscheidungsprozesse meist auf lokaler Ebene getroffen werden, bedarf es zudem kleinräumiger Informationen, um gezielte Handlungsempfehlungen ableiten zu können. Das stellt Forschende wiederum vor große Herausforderungen im Erstellungsprozess regionalisierter Simulationsmodelle. Dieser Prozess reicht von der Generierung geeigneter Ausgangsdatensätze über die Erfassung und Umsetzung der dynamischen Komponenten bis hin zur Auswertung der Ergebnisse und Quantifizierung von Unsicherheiten. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit werden ausgewählte Komponenten, die für regionalisierte Mikrosimulationen von besonderer Relevanz sind, beschrieben und systematisch analysiert. Zunächst werden in Kapitel 2 theoretische und methodische Aspekte von Mikrosimulationen vorgestellt, um einen umfassenden Überblick über verschiedene Arten und Möglichkeiten der Umsetzung dynamischer Modellierungen zu geben. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Grundlagen der Erfassung und Simulation von Zuständen und Zustandsänderungen sowie die damit verbundenen strukturellen Aspekte im Simulationsprozess. Sowohl für die Simulation von Zustandsänderungen als auch für die Erweiterung der Datenbasis werden primär logistische Regressionsmodelle zur Erfassung und anschließenden wahrscheinlichkeitsbasierten Vorhersage der Bevölkerungsstrukturen auf Mikroebene herangezogen. Die Schätzung beruht insbesondere auf Stichprobendaten, die in der Regel neben einem eingeschränktem Stichprobenumfang keine oder nur unzureichende regionale Differenzierungen zulassen. Daher können bei der Vorhersage von Wahrscheinlichkeiten erhebliche Differenzen zu bekannten Totalwerten entstehen. Um eine Harmonisierung mit den Totalwerten zu erhalten, lassen sich Methoden zur Anpassung von Wahrscheinlichkeiten – sogenannte Alignmentmethoden – anwenden. In der Literatur werden zwar unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten beschrieben, über die Auswirkungen dieser Verfahren auf die Güte der Modelle ist jedoch kaum etwas bekannt. Zur Beurteilung verschiedener Techniken werden diese im Rahmen von Kapitel 3 in umfassenden Simulationsstudien unter verschiedenen Szenarien umgesetzt. Hierbei kann gezeigt werden, dass durch die Einbindung zusätzlicher Informationen im Modellierungsprozess deutliche Verbesserungen sowohl bei der Schätzung der Parameter als auch bei der Vorhersage der Wahrscheinlichkeiten erzielt werden können. Zudem lassen sich dadurch auch bei fehlenden regionalen Identifikatoren in den Modellierungsdaten kleinräumige Wahrscheinlichkeiten erzeugen. Insbesondere die Maximierung der Likelihood des zugrundeliegenden Regressionsmodells unter der Nebenbedingung, dass die bekannten Totalwerte eingehalten werden, weist in allen Simulationsstudien überaus gute Ergebnisse auf. Als eine der einflussreichsten Komponenten in regionalisierten Mikrosimulationen erweist sich die Umsetzung regionaler Mobilität. Gleichzeitig finden Wanderungen in vielen Mikrosimulationsmodellen keine oder nur unzureichende Beachtung. Durch den unmittelbaren Einfluss auf die gesamte Bevölkerungsstruktur führt ein Ignorieren jedoch bereits bei einem kurzen Simulationshorizont zu starken Verzerrungen. Während für globale Modelle die Integration von Wanderungsbewegungen über Landesgrenzen ausreicht, müssen in regionalisierten Modellen auch Binnenwanderungsbewegungen möglichst umfassend nachgebildet werden. Zu diesem Zweck werden in Kapitel 4 Konzepte für Wanderungsmodule erstellt, die zum einen eine unabhängige Simulation auf regionalen Subpopulationen und zum anderen eine umfassende Nachbildung von Wanderungsbewegungen innerhalb der gesamten Population zulassen. Um eine Berücksichtigung von Haushaltsstrukturen zu ermöglichen und die Plausibilität der Daten zu gewährleisten, wird ein Algorithmus zur Kalibrierung von Haushaltswahrscheinlichkeiten vorgeschlagen, der die Einhaltung von Benchmarks auf Individualebene ermöglicht. Über die retrospektive Evaluation der simulierten Migrationsbewegungen wird die Funktionalität der Wanderdungskonzepte verdeutlicht. Darüber hinaus werden über die Fortschreibung der Population in zukünftige Perioden divergente Entwicklungen der Einwohnerzahlen durch verschiedene Konzepte der Wanderungen analysiert. Eine besondere Herausforderung in dynamischen Mikrosimulationen stellt die Erfassung von Unsicherheiten dar. Durch die Komplexität der gesamten Struktur und die Heterogenität der Komponenten ist die Anwendung klassischer Methoden zur Messung von Unsicherheiten oft nicht mehr möglich. Zur Quantifizierung verschiedener Einflussfaktoren werden in Kapitel 5 varianzbasierte Sensitivitätsanalysen vorgeschlagen, die aufgrund ihrer enormen Flexibilität auch direkte Vergleiche zwischen unterschiedlichsten Komponenten ermöglichen. Dabei erweisen sich Sensitivitätsanalysen nicht nur für die Erfassung von Unsicherheiten, sondern auch für die direkte Analyse verschiedener Szenarien, insbesondere zur Evaluation gemeinsamer Effekte, als überaus geeignet. In Simulationsstudien wird die Anwendung im konkreten Kontext dynamischer Modelle veranschaulicht. Dadurch wird deutlich, dass zum einen große Unterschiede hinsichtlich verschiedener Zielwerte und Simulationsperioden auftreten, zum anderen aber auch immer der Grad an regionaler Differenzierung berücksichtigt werden muss. Kapitel 6 fasst die Erkenntnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit zusammen und gibt einen Ausblick auf zukünftige Forschungspotentiale.

This thesis comprises of four research papers on the economics of education and industrial relations, which contribute to the field of empirical economic research. All of the corresponding papers focus on analysing how much time individuals spend on specific activities. The allocation of available time resources is a decision that individuals make throughout their lifetime. In this thesis, we consider individuals at different stages of their lives - students at school, university students, and dependent employees at the workplace. Part I includes two research studies on student's behaviour in secondary and tertiary education. Chapter 2 explores whether students who are relatively younger or older within the school year exhibit differential time allocation. Building on previous findings showing that relatively younger students perform worse in school, the study shows that relatively younger students are aware of their poor performance in school and feel more strain as a result. Nevertheless, there are no clear differences to be found in terms of time spent on homework, while relatively younger students spend more time watching television and less time on sports activities. Thus, the results suggest that the lower learning outcomes are not associated with different time allocations between school-related activities and non-school-related activities. Chapter 3 analyses how individual ability and labour market prospects affect study behaviour. The theoretical modelling predicts that both determinants increase study effort. The empirical investigation is based on cross-sectional data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and includes thousands of students in Germany. The analyses show that more gifted students exhibit lower subjective effort levels and invest less time in self-study. In contrast, very good labour market prospects lead to more effort exerted by the student, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The potential endogeneity problem is taken into account by using regional unemployment data as an instrumental variable. Part II includes two labour economic studies on determinants of overtime. Both studies belong to the field of industrial relations, as they focus on union membership on the one hand and the interplay of works councils and collective bargaining coverage on the other. Chapter 4 shows that union members work less overtime than non-members do. The econometric approach takes the problem of unobserved heterogeneity into account; but provides no evidence that this issue affects the results. Different channels that could lead to this relationship are analysed by examining relevant subgroups separately. For example, this effect of union membership can also be observed in establishments with works councils and for workers who are very likely to be covered by collective bargaining agreements. The study concludes that the observed effect is due to the fact that union membership can protect workers from corresponding increased working time demands by employers. Chapter 5 builds on previous studies showing a negative effect of works councils on overtime. In addition to co-determination by works councils at the firm level, collective bargaining coverage is an important factor in the German industrial relations system. Corresponding data was not available in the SOEP for quite some time. Therefore, the study uses recent SOEP data, which also contains information on collective bargaining coverage. A cross-sectional analysis is conducted to examine the effects of works councils in establishments with and without collective bargaining coverage. Similar to studies analysing other outcome variables, the results show that the effect of works councils exists only for employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

Startups are essential agents for the evolution of economies and the creative destruction of established market conditions for the benefit of a more effective and efficient economy. Their significance is manifested in their drive for innovation and technological advancements, their creation of new jobs, their contribution to economic growth, and their impact on increased competition and increased market efficiency. By reason of their attributes of newness and smallness, startups often experience a limitation in accessing external financial resources. Extant research on entrepreneurial finance examines the capital structure of startups, various funding tools, financing environments in certain regions, and investor selection criteria among other topics. My dissertation contributes to this research area by examining the becoming increasingly important funding instrument of venture debt. Prior research on venture debt only investigated the business model of venture debt, the concept of venture debt, the selection criteria of venture debt providers, and the role of patents in the venture debt provider’s selection process. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, the dissertation outlines the emergence of venture debt in Europe as well as the impact of venture debt on startups to open up a better understanding of venture debt. The results of the qualitative studies indicate that venture debt was formed based on a ‘Kirznerian’ entrepreneurial opportunity and venture debt impacts startups positive and negative in their development via different impact mechanisms. Based on these results, the dissertation analyzes the empirical impact of venture debt on a startup’s ability to acquire additional financial resources as well as the role of the reputation of venture debt providers. The results suggest that venture debt increases the likelihood of acquiring additional financial resources via subsequent funding rounds and trade sales. In addition, a higher venture debt provider reputation increases the likelihood of acquiring additional financial resources via IPOs.

This thesis is comprised of three projects, all of which are fundamentally connected to the choices that individuals make about stock investments. Differences in stock market participation (SMP) across countries are large and difficult to explain. The second chapter focuses on differences between Germany (low SMP) and East Asian countries (mostly high SMP). The study hypothesis is that cultural differences regarding social preferences and attitudes towards inequality lead to different attitudes towards stock markets and subsequently to different SMPs. Using a large-scale survey, it is found that these factors can, indeed, explain a substantial amount of the country differences that other known factors (financial literacy, risk preferences, etc.) could not. This suggests that social preferences should be given a more central role in programs that aim to enhance SMP in countries like Germany. The third chapter documented the importance of trust as well as herding for stock ownership decisions. The findings show that trust as a general concept has no significant contribution to stock investment intention. A thorough examination of general trust elements reveals that in group and out-group trust have an impact on individual stock market investment. Higher out group trust directly influences a person's decision to invest in stocks, whereas higher in-group trust increases herding attitudes in stock investment decisions and thus can potentially increase the likelihood of stock investments as well. The last chapter investigates the significance of personality traits in stock investing and home bias in portfolio selection. Findings show that personality traits do indeed have a significant impact on stock investment and portfolio allocation decisions. Despite the fact that the magnitude and significance of characteristics differ between two groups of investors, inexperienced and experienced, conscientiousness and neuroticism play an important role in stock investments and preferences. Moreover, high conscientiousness scores increase stock investment desire and portfolio allocation to risky assets like stocks, discouraging home bias in asset allocation. Regarding neuroticism, a higher-level increases home bias in portfolio selection and decreases willingness to stock investment and portfolio share. Finally, when an investor has no prior experience with portfolio selection, patriotism generates home bias. For experienced investors, having a low neuroticism score and a high conscientiousness and openness score seemed to be a constant factor in deciding to invest in a well-diversified international portfolio

Coastal erosion describes the displacement of land caused by destructive sea waves, currents or tides. Due to the global climate change and associated phenomena such as melting polar ice caps and changing current patterns of the oceans, which result in rising sea levels or increased current velocities, the need for countermeasures is continuously increasing. Today, major efforts have been made to mitigate these effects using groins, breakwaters and various other structures. This thesis will find a novel approach to address this problem by applying shape optimization on the obstacles. Due to this reason, results of this thesis always contain the following three distinct aspects: The selected wave propagation model, i.e. the modeling of wave propagation towards the coastline, using various wave formulations, ranging from steady to unsteady descriptions, described from the Lagrangian or Eulerian viewpoint with all its specialties. More precisely, in the Eulerian setting is first a steady Helmholtz equation in the form of a scattering problem investigated and followed subsequently by shallow water equations, in classical form, equipped with porosity, sediment portability and further subtleties. Secondly, in a Lagrangian framework the Lagrangian shallow water equations form the center of interest. The chosen discretization, i.e. dependent on the nature and peculiarity of the constraining partial differential equation, we choose between finite elements in conjunction with a continuous Galerkin and discontinuous Galerkin method for investigations in the Eulerian description. In addition, the Lagrangian viewpoint offers itself for mesh-free, particle-based discretizations, where smoothed particle hydrodynamics are used. The method for shape optimization w.r.t. the obstacle’s shape over an appropriate cost function, constrained by the solution of the selected wave-propagation model. In this sense, we rely on a differentiate-then-discretize approach for free-form shape optimization in the Eulerian set-up, and reverse the order in Lagrangian computations.