Empirical investigations with enterprise level data from official statistics often use the averagewage as a proxy variable for the qualification of the workforce, mostly due to the lack ofdetailed information on the qualification of the employees. This paper uses unique newlyavailable data for...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyze the impacts of credit and technologyshocks on business cycle dynamics, where firms rely on banks and households for capitalfinancing. Firms are identical ex ante but differ ex post due to different realizations of firmspecific technology...

This paper contributes to the literature on international firm activities and firm performance byproviding the first evidence on the link of productivity and both exports and foreign directinvestment (fdi) in services firms from a highly developed country. It uses unique new datafrom Germany -...

While the allocative efficiency of mobility is typically considered to be positive but small in the long run, the induced changes in equality may be considerable in size. In practice, however, migrants typically improve their income position in comparison to those at home, stimulate the economic...

This paper extends the cross sectionally augmented panel unit root test proposed byPesaran (2007) to the case of a multifactor error structure. The basic idea is to exploitinformation regarding the unobserved factors that are shared by other time series in additionto the variable under...

While it is a stylized fact that exporting firms pay higher wages than non-exporting firms, the direction of the link between exporting and wages is less clear. Using a rich set of German linked employer-employee panel data we follow over time plants that start to export. We show that the...

Are ethnic specialization and thus a downward sloping labor demand curve fundamentalfeatures of labor market competition between ethnic groups? In a general equilibrium model,this paper argues that spillover effects in skill acquisition and social distances between ethnicgroups engender...

The labor market outcomes of ethnic minorities in advanced societies and their dependenceon social relationships and membership in social networks are important empirical issueswith significant policy consequences...

This paper examines resident foreigners´ interest in German citizenship. The study focuseson the roles played by attitudes towards foreigners, political interest of foreigners,intergenerational conflict between natives and foreigners and among foreigners themselves,and regional differences in...

We investigate the effect of forecast uncertainty in a cointegrating vector error correctionmodel for Switzerland. Forecast uncertainty is evaluated in three different dimensions. First,we investigate the effect on forecasting performance of averaging over forecasts fromdifferent models...