This paper addresses the issue of environmental awareness in the regions of the Russian Federation. For this purpose, an index of environmental awareness at regional level is derived as a latent variable from various categories of search entries in Yandex, the prominent Russian search engine, during two periods in the years 2014 and 2015. The frequency of these search requests presumably depends on certain economic and socio‐economic causes, which are integrated into the model for further investigation. The relation between regional wealth and environmental awareness is thereby of particular interest. The multiple indicators‐multiple (MIMIC) causes model allows us to estimate an index of environmental awareness and to rank the Russian regions according to this index.

This thesis reveals methods for estimating individual perception at the regional level, such as environmental awareness or wage effects due to labour market tightness. Environmental awareness belongs to individual attitudes, which is driven by socialization, culture and education. Consequently, it is difficult to compare environmental awareness between regions. Labour market tightness might be reflected in individual wages, but the latter is also triggered by a lot of exogenous variables. Given that a simple linear regression model fails in both cases, existing alternative approaches from the econometrics like Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause model and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operators are used.First, a Multiple-Indicator Multiple-Causes model is introduced, which allows us to estimate a not-directly observable individual attitude, environmental awareness, for different regions and to rank them. The method is cost-effective and less time-consuming, it also allows for comparisons between regions. The study area serves 81 regions in Russia. The model is constructed in such a way that Internet queries from the search engine c Yandex are assumed to be indicators, which are affected by the regional environmental awareness index. In addition, regional characteristics, such as Gross Regional Product per capita, the proportion of employees in specific industry sectors, and also the environmental situation within the regions are potential cause variables. The regional environmental awareness index is estimated for each of the Russian regions from January 2014 until April 2016. Furthermore, the findings shows a rather non-linear positive relationship between the regional environmental awareness and regional wealth, as well as a strong negative correlation with the temperature. The colder the region and the observed month, the higher the interest of the population in environmental topics. Furthermore, the regions can be grouped into four environmental awareness clusters by using k-means clustering algorithm. It seems that the environmental awareness index shrinks from the Eastern to the Western part of Russia. The highest values can be estimated in Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Magadan. The lowest values are found in the rather poor and warm Caucasus area.Second, another issue concerns the estimation of an effect of an observable regional variable, such as labour supply shortage, on individual wages. This thesis investigates the ten year wage development of employees who first enter the labour market from 1995 until 2004 and looks for positive wage effects of labour market tightness in different occupational groups. Due to incomplete vacancy data, labour market tightness is measured as the number of unemployed people divided by the number of employees within an occupational field and region. Mean and quantile regression methods are applied. Because the number of right-hand side variables could lead to incorrect detected statistical significant coefficients, different Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operato...

It is often stated that certain occupations in Germany, because of “Demographic Change “, are dwindling, implying a labor shortage. We investigate the 10-year wage growth of young employees entering the labor market in different occupations. Our findings suggest that regional labor market tightness in occupational fields significantly explains wage growth. Individuals who start their careers in a tighter labor market enjoy higher wage growth than workers in more relaxed labor markets. We identify some occupational fields where the effect is especially strong, such as several engineering groups, IT occupations, technicians, and some commercial occupations. Interestingly, health-care occupations reveal a reverse relation.

The paper addresses the issue of environmental awareness in the regions of the Russian Federation. Russia provides an important study area to investigate the relationship between economic development and environmental consciousness in general. This paper introduces an index of environmental awareness, which is derived as a latent variable from various categories of search entries in Yandex, the prominent Russian search engine, during two periods in years 2014 and 2015. These indicators are presumably dependent on certain causes, which are also integrated into the model. The resulting Multiple Indicators-Multiple Causes model allows to estimate the proposed index of environmental awareness and to rank the Russian regions for each period. Comparing the results of 2014 and 2015 is especially interesting, because of the RUR devaluation at the end of 2014. In additional, we answer the question of the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve with respect to environmental understanding.

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