Empirical studies show that female workers are under-represented in highest hierarchical positions of companies, which is known as the glass-ceiling effect. In this study we investigate the relationship between social networks and the glass-ceiling effect. Specifically, we develop an equilibrium...

With ideological parties being better informed about the state of the world than voters, the true motivation of policy proposals is hard to judge for the electorate. However, if reform proposals have to be agreed upon by coalition parties, it may become possible for the government to signal to...

The implementation of European Union directives into national law is at the discretion of member states. We analyze incentives for member states to deviate from these directives when the European Commission may sue a defecting member state and rulings at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are...

We estimate a linear and a piecewise linear Phillips curve model with regional labor market data for West German and Neue Länder. Employing regional observations allows us to country difference the data. This eliminates, under the assumption of homogeneous Länder, supply shocks and changes in...

It is widely debated whether a monetary union has to be accompanied by a fiscal transfer scheme to accommodate asymmetric shocks. We build a model of a monetary union with a central bank and two heterogeneous countries that are linked by a fiscal transfer scheme with repercussions on monetary...

A large body of evidence suggests that social comparisons matter for workers' valuation of the wage they receive. The consequences of social comparisons in imperfectly competitive labor markets are less well understood. We analyze an oligopsonistic model of the labor market where workers derive...

When countries need to implement costly economic policy reforms, these often imply uncertainties about their effectiveness for the home country and their spillovers to other countries. We develop a model to show that under these circumstances countries implement too few or too many policy...

What are the incentives for governments to coordinate their policies internationally when there is model disagreement and uncertainty? We build a model where countries disagree on policy targets and how policies affect the economies, and show that uncertainty not only determines the type of...