Language proficiency may not only affect the earnings of the individual, but the probability to participate in the labor market or becoming employed as well. It may also affect selection of people into economic sector and occupation. In this paper, the effects of language proficiency on earnings...

Immigrants consist of foreigners and citizens with migration background. We analyze the wage gap between natives and these two groups in Germany. The estimates show a substantial gap for both groups with respect to natives. Discarding immigrants who completed education abroad reduces much of the...

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity...

Using data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and from official statistics, I study whether natives are less supportive of state help for the unemployed in regions where the share of foreigners among the unemployed is high. Unlike previous studies, I use...

Multivariate Tobit models are estimated using German cross?sectional data to test whether strategic complementarities exist between expenditures in four different types of ICT?components. If two ICT?components are complements, they are correlated (provided that agents act rationally)....

In the 1990s, patenting schemes changed in many respects: upcoming new technologies accelerated the shift from price competition towards competition based on technical inventions, a worldwide surge in patenting took place, and the ?patent thicket? arose as a consequence of strategic patenting....

Public procurement has been at the centre of recent discussions on innovation policy on both European and national levels (e.g., Aho-Report, Barcelona Strategy). It has a large potential to stimulate innovation since it accounts for 16% of combined EU-15 GDP. We embed public procurement for...

We consider an extension of conventional univariate Kaplan-Meier type estimators for the hazard rate and the survivor function to multivariate censored data with a censored random regressor. It is an Akritas (1994) type estimator which adapts the nonparametric conditional hazard rate estimator...

Recent studies have documented extensive heterogeneity in firm performance within countries, and innovation has been found as an important determinant. This paper addresses the issue of innovation firm performance across countries. A growing number of national firm level studies on the...