According to the mainstream view, labour market institutions (LMI) are the key determinants of unemployment in the medium run. The actual empirical explanatory power of measures for labour market institutions, however, has been called into question recently (Baker et al 2005, Baccaro and Rei...

The German unemployment rate shows strong signs if non-stationarity over the course of the previous decades. This is in line with an insider-outsider model under full hysteresis. We applied a "theory-guided view" to the data using the structural VAR model as developed by Balmaseda, Dolado and...

In line with the neoclassical growth model a persistent stream of oil revenues might have a long lasting impact on GDP per capita in oil exporting countries through higher investment activities. This relationship is explored for Iran and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) using...

Despite high economic growth during the last decades, China is still vulnerable to shocks arising from industrial states. The advanced economies determine Chinese export performance, with subsequent effects on output growth. Using a production function approach, this paper examines to which...

We analyse the relationship between the debt to GDP ratio and real per capita GDP growth for the euro area members by distinguishing between periods of sustainable and non-sustainable debt. Thresholds are theory-based and depend on the macroeconomic framework. If the interest rate exceeds...

This study examines the export-led growth hypothesis using annual time series data from Chile in a production function framework. It addresses the problem of specification bias under which previous studies have suffered and focuses on the impact of manufactured and mining exports on productivity...

This paper analyzes the necessary local conditions required for the existence of positive spillovers from multinationals' entry and it consists of a unified study of absorptive capacities. We start from the idea that FDI speeds up the diffusion of technologies across countries. Yet, the question...

This paper challenges the common view that exports generally contribute more to GDP growth than a pure change in export volume, as the export-led growth hypothesis predicts. Applying panel cointegration techniques to a production function with non-export GDP as the dependent variable, we find...

This paper presents a revised version of the DIW Economic Barometer, the business cycle index of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). As in earlier versions, we put forward a factor model on a monthly frequency to filter the latent state of the aggregate economy. In the new...

A couple of recent papers have shifted the focus towards disagreement of professional forecasters. When dealing with survey data that is sampled at a frequency higher than annual and that includes only fixed event forecasts, e.g. expectation of average annual growth rates measures of...