We provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity in 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two international TIMSS tests. We then show how organizational features of the education system affect equality of educational opportunity. Our...

We study the effects of random assignment to coeducational and single-sex classes on the academic performance of female high school students. Our estimation results show that single-sex schooling improves the performance of female students in mathematics. This positive effect increases if the...

How does an artist’s death impact on the price of his or her works of art? We investigate this question in an infinite-horizon dynamic general equilibrium setting. Employing the open-loop Stackelberg equilibrium concept to describe the interactive behaviour of collectors and artists, we find...

In this paper we present a model of endogenous trade-policy formation which captures crucial aspects of the Japanese commercial and political culture. We analyze the influence of the portrayed cultural traits and show that cultural idiosyncrasies are important determinants of trade policy...

According to the disciplining hypothesis, globalization restrains governments by inducing increased budgetary pressure. As a consequence, governments shift their expenditures in favour of transfers and subsidies and away from capital expenditures. This expenditure shift is potentially enhanced...

In this paper we ague that any meaningful bibliometric evaluation of researchers needs to take into account that research productivity follows distinct life cycles. Using an encompassing data set portraying the research behavior of German academic economists, we first show that research...

We analyze how an artist’s death influences the market prices of her works of art. Death has two opposing effects on art prices. By irrevocably restricting the artist’s oeuvre, prices, ceteris paribus, increase when the artist dies. On the other hand, an untimely death may well frustrate the...

Multinational enterprises are often accused to have a preference for investing in countries in which the working populations' civil and political rights are largely disregarded. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the popular "political repression boosts FDI" hypothesis and arrives...

The traditional criticism notwithstanding, we show that social mobility can, in principle, explain political income redistributions. Nonetheless, the social-mobility argument for redistribution is not satisfactory, as actual transition probabilities are not consistent with order-preserving...

Economic theory advances various arguments in favor of and against privatizing education. In this paper we investigate the extent to which these arguments influence voters’ opinions. We analyze two popular referenda in which some 400,000 voters in two Swiss cantons expressed their opinions on...