The paper uses a comprehensive data set with bilateral direct investment flows and establishes the influence of the de-facto exchange rate regime for FDI flows. We find a strong and significant effect from fixed rates on bilateral FDI flows in developed economies, but no significant effect for...

When attempting to measure gun ownership in the United States, the problem of missing administrative data arises, making it necessary to find a valid proxy. Several such proxies are employed in economic studies, one of which is the fraction of "suicides by firearm" of "all suicides" (FSS). My...

In this paper we use the NEG framework of the Helpman model to investigate the spatial distribution of wages across German labour market regions under different assumptions. As the assumptions of equal regional price level and equal real wages are strongly rejected for the German economy,...

Against the background of the current economic research which concentrates particularly on individual and structural factors, this paper examines if and to what extent social norms (in terms of attitudes towards gender roles and work commitment) can make a complementary statement in explaining...

Empirical evidence on the degree of business-tax shifting to employees via the wage level is highly controversial and rare. It remains open to which extent the tax burden is shifted, whether there are differences for tax increases and decreases, or whether there exists some treatment...

This paper investigates how inflation expectations evolve. In particular, we analyze the time-varying nature of the propensity to update expectations and its potential determinants. For this purpose we set up a flexible econometric model that tracks the formation of inflation expectations of...

More recently, there has been a renewed interest in cluster policies for supporting industrial and regional development. By virtue of the linkage between growth and innovation, R&D intensive industries play a crucial role in cluster development strategies. Empirical cluster research has to...

We examine determinants of the composition of public expenditure in the German Laender (states) over the period 1993-2008, as the Laender exhibit a high degree of institutional and political homogeneity and are endowed with extensive fiscal competences. Our prime contribution is an investigation...