The German banking market is notorious for its low degree of market penetration by foreign financial institutions, suggesting that markets serviced by domestic and foreign banks are segmented. This paper employs a number of tests to determine whether activities of domestic and foreign banks are...

We estimate the relative roles of factor inputs and productivity in explaining the level of economic development, which is measured as output per worker. For a large sample of countries, we show that alternative identifying productivity assumptions and alternative measures of human capital have...

We ask why, in many circumstances and many environments, decision-makers choose to act on a time-regular basis (e.g. adjust every six weeks) or on a stateregular basis (e.g. set prices ending in a 9), even though such an approach appears suboptimal. The paper attributes regular behaviour to...

This paper studies the determinants of Austrian bilateral intra-firm trade in a panel of industry-level intra-firm goods trade flows. Economic size, unit labor costs and the magnification effects originating from multiple border crossing of sequentially finished products are found to be the most...

Starting in 2006 the German economy currently experiences a cyclical revival which spreads to the labor market. Unemployment decreases markedly and regular employment rises. At present, virtually all professional forecasts expect this upswing to continue in the foreseeable future. Against this...