This paper explores whether investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) and firm?sponsored training programmes are complementary. Three approaches are applied to panel data from German service companies for the time period 1994?98. Results for a system of interrelated factor...

Using panel data for German and Dutch firms from the services sector, this paper analyses the importance of ICT capital deepening and innovation for productivity. We employ a model that takes into account that innovation and ICT use may be complementary. The results show that the contribution of...

In this paper, it is argued that ICT investment is closely linked with complementary innovations and most productive in firms with innovative experience. In an analysis based on firm?level panel data covering the period 1994?99, system GMM estimates for an extended production function framework...

In order to assess the productivity effects of information and communication technologies (ICT), regressions based on cross?sectional firm?level data may yield unreliable results for the commonly employed production function framework. In this paper, various estimation biases and econometric...

Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in U.S. elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced individuals. Taken together, this suggests that babyfaced political candidates are perceived as less...

We study the role of beauty in politics. For the first time, focus is put on differences in how women and men evaluate female and male candidates and how different candidate traits relate to success in real and hypothetical elections. We have collected 16,218 assessments by 2,772 respondents of...

Political candidates on the right are more beautiful or are seen as more competent than candidates on the left in Australia, Finland, France, and the United States. This appearance gap gives candidates on the right an advantage in elections, which could in turn influence policy outcomes. As an...