We present a model where firms make competitive decisions about the optimal duration (or time to build) of their R&D projects. Choosing its project’s duration, the firm can choose to become a leader or a follower, based on its R&D efficiency, the size of the R&D to be carried out and the...

When the world economy was recently hit by a severe recession, governments all over the world reacted by initiating stimulus packages. Some countries (among them, most notably, China and the US) tried to put special emphasis on their home industries by including “Buy local” clauses into the...

We study the spillover effects of minimum wages in a laboratory experiment. In a bilateral firm-worker bargaining setting, we find that the introduction of a minimum wage exerts upward pressure on wages even if the minimum wage is too low to be a binding restriction. Furthermore, raising the...

Current literature shows a significant negative impact of terrorism on countries economies. We explore this relationship in more detail. Using an unbalanced panel of over 160 countries for up to 25 years and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) we show a decrease in FDI as a consequence of...

We set up a trade model where three countries compete for an exogenous number of firms. Our innovation lies in the geography of the model. Of the three countries, one is the hub through which all trade takes place. First, we establish the natural geography of the region, which is given by the...

This paper offers quasi experimental evidence of the existence of spillover effects of UI extensions using a unique program that extended unemployment benefits drastically for a subset of workers in selected regions of Austria. We use non-eligible unemployed in treated regions, and a...

This paper analyses the dynamic effects of fiscal imbalances in a given EMU member state on the borrowing costs of other countries in the euro area. The estimation of a multivariate, multi-country time series model (specifically a Global VAR, or GVAR) using quarterly data for the EMU period...