This paper investigates the effect of physicians on infant mortality, stillbirths and the incidence of common childhood diseases. We construct a new panel data set covering German municipalities from 1928 to 1936 based on historical sources. The endogeneity of health care supply is addressed by...

Does the emigration of skilled individuals necessarily result in losses for source countries due to the brain drain? Combining industry-level patenting and migration data from 32 European countries, we show that emigration in fact positively contributes to innovation in source countries. We use...

Transfers from parents—either in the form of gifts or inheritances—have received much attention as a source of inequality. This paper uses a 19-year panel of administrative data for the population of Norway to examine the share of the Total Inflows available to an individual (defined as the...

This paper provides new evidence on the stochastic behaviour of the EPU (Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index constructed by Baker et al. (2016) in six of the biggest economies (Canada, France, Japan, US, Ireland, and Sweden) over the period from January 1985 to October 2019. In particular,...

The paper reviews recent literature on the economics of migration and diasporas, focusing on economic gains and opportunities that these diasporas could represent for home countries. In addition, the paper discusses policies aimed at leveraging this "diaspora capital"

We generalise the traditional development-accounting framework to an open-economy setting. In addition to factor endowments and productivity, relative factor costs emerge as a source of real-income variation across countries. These are shaped by bilateral trade determinants (which underpin the...

This paper focuses on the analysis of the long-run response of the Real Exchange Rate (RER) to political risks and tests whether non-economic variables have an impact on RER in 31 emerging and developing countries. We use annual data from the International Country Risk Guide database over the...

IMF programs are often considered to carry a “stigma” that triggers adverse market reactions. We show that such a negative IMF effect disappears when accounting for endogenous selection into programs. To proxy for a country's access to financial markets, we use credit ratings and investor...