What risks do asset price bubbles pose for the economy? This paper studies bubbles in housing and equity markets in 17 countries over the past 140 years. History shows that not all bubbles are alike. Some have enormous costs for the economy, while others blow over. We demonstrate that what makes...

Focusing in particular on upper secondary education, this paper examines whether the relatively high level of expenditure on education in the Nordic countries is matched by high output from the educational sector, both in terms of student enrolment and indicators of output quality in the form of...

Two separate narratives have emerged in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. One speaks of private financial excess and the key role of the banking system in leveraging and deleveraging the economy. The other emphasizes the public sector balance sheet over the private and worries about the...

Does after-school care provision promote mothers' employment and balance the allocation of paid work among parents of schoolchildren? We address this question by exploiting variation in cantonal (state) regulations of after-school care provision in Switzerland. To establish exogeneity of...

We propose a nonparametric method to test which characteristics provide independent information for the cross section of expected returns. We use the adaptive group LASSO to select characteristics and to estimate how they affect expected returns nonparametrically. Our method can handle a large...

This paper examines the degree of persistence in UK inflation by applying long-memory methods to historical data that span the period from 1660 to 2016. Specifically, we use both parametric and non-parametric fractional integration techniques, that are more general than those based on the...

Understanding the mechanisms through which treatment effects come about is crucial for designing effective interventions. The identification of such causal mechanisms is challenging and typically requires strong assumptions. This paper discusses identification and estimation of natural direct...

We propose a nonparametric method to study which characteristics provide incremental information for the cross section of expected returns. We use the adaptive group LASSO to select characteristics and to estimate how they affect expected returns nonparametrically. Our method can handle a large...

Multinational labor demand responds to wage differentials at the extensive margin, when a multinational enterprise (MNE) expands into foreign locations, and at the intensive margin, when an MNE operates existing affiliates across locations. We derive conditions for parametric and nonparametric...

This paper explores the existence of downward real wage rigidity (DRWR) in 19 OECD countries, over the period 1973-1999, using data for hourly nominal earnings at industry level. Based on a nonparametric statistical method, which allows for country and year specific variation in both the median...