This paper studies the influence of interregional inequality within countries on internal con-flicts. Regional inequalities are measured by the population-weighted coefficient of variation of regional GDP per capita. As the main innovation, I use a panel data set of country-level re- gional...

We have argued that from the standpoint of a policy maker, the uncertainty of using the average forecast is not the variance of the average, but rather the average of the variances of the individual forecasts that incorporate idiosyncratic risks. With a slight reformulation of the loss function...

One of the oldest and largest literatures in empirical economics is concerned with the estimation of demand and supply of goods, services, and factors across national or subnational borders (see Leamer and Levinsohn, 1995). The respective empirical models specified and estimated are often...

This paper studies the effect of hospital ownership on treatment rates allowing for spatial correlation among hospitals. Competition among hospitals and knowledge spillovers generate significant externalities which we try to capture using the spatial Durbin model. Using a panel of 2342 hospitals...

We examine whether US and German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal transfers. Using panel data techniques we investigate whether the debt-to-GDP ratio had a positive influence on the primary surplus (Bohn-model). We show that including/excluding...

This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from...

This paper investigates the asymptotic local power of the the averaged t-test of Im, Pesaran and Shin (2003, IPS hereafter) in the presence of both initial explosive conditions and incidental trends. By utilizing the least squares detrending methods, it is found that the initial condition plays...

We examine the extent to which government ideology has influenced monetary policy in OECD countries since the 1970s. In line with important changes in the global economy and differences across countries, regression results yield heterogeneous inferences depending on the time period and the...

This paper analyses the effect of the presence of German language learning opportunities abroad on migration to Germany. We use information on the presence of the Goethe-Institut (GI), which is an association that promotes German culture and offers language courses and standardized exams. Our...

The paper analyses the empirical relationship between immigrants and crime using panel data for 391 German administrative districts between 2003 and 2016. Employing different standard panel estimation methods, we show that there is no positive association between the immigrant rate and the crime...