Class specific mortality in 17th and 18th Century Vienna shows a cyclical pattern which is related to grain price cycles in the 5-10 years range. This relationship is not stable over time. Applying spectral analysis based on time-varying VARs, it can be shown that at the beginning of the...

The cyclicality of real wages has important implications for the validity of competing business cycle theories. However, the empirical evidence on the aggregate level is inconclusive. Using a threshold vector autoregressive model for the US and Germany to condition the relationship between real...

The literature on endogenous growth cycles predicts countercyclical R&D expenditure. Aggregate R&D expenditure in G7 countries from 1973 to 1997 seems to be procyclical. Implications for future theoretical research are discussed.

The paper analyzes the class specific biological standard of living in the city of Zurich during World War I. We find an increase of aver- age human stature for lower class conscripts born during this period, while the average height of conscripts from the upper and middle class stagnated or...

To assess the impact of interventions on well-being during war time, we analyze data from the birth records at the university maternity hospital of Basle in the period 1912-1920. Birth weight of children from medium SEP families decreased during the crisis years 1918 and 1919, but not for low...

When a negative shock affcts a cohort in utero, two things may happen: first, the population suffers detrimental consequences in later life; and second, some will die as a consequence of the shock, either in utero or early in life. The latter effect, often referred to as culling, may induce a bias...

To better understand the quantitative implications of human capital externalities at the aggregate level, we estimate a two-sector endogenous growth model with knowledge spill-overs. To achieve this, we account for trend growth in a model consistent fashion and employ a Markov-chain Monte-Carlo...

In the time domain, the observed cyclical behavior of the real wage hides a range of economic influences that give rise to cycles of differing lengths and amplitudes. This may serve to produce a distorted picture of wage cyclicality. Here, we employ frequency domain methods that allow us...

This paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to examine the quantitative macroeconomic implications of countercyclical fiscal policy for France, Germany and the UK. The model incorporates real wage rigidity which is the particular market failure justifying policy...