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...

In this paper, we estimate the potential tax burden in a panel data set comprising OECD countries over the period 2000-2021. To this end, we use non-parametric and parametric techniques: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). In this way, it will be possible for...

The literature on estimating macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy requires suitable instruments to identify exogenous and unanticipated spending shocks. So far, the instrument of choice has been military build-ups. This instrument, however, largely limits the analysis to the US as few other...

We estimate the fiscal multiplier associated with shocks to government spending. We consider increases in government spending in the U.S. states in the wake of natural disasters to capture spending shocks that are both unexpected and unrelated to the preceding state of the economy. We find that...

Do minimum wages reduce in-work-poverty and wage inequality? Or can alternative policies do better? We evaluate theses issues for the exemplary case of Germany that suffers from high unemployment among low-skilled workers and rising wage dispersion at the bottom of the wage distribution. We...

In this study, I will look at the spending role of government and the outcomes of government activity in Europe and Asia. Public spending and performance patterns differ hugely across countries. Asian "tigers" and some advanced countries show low public spending coupled with strong performance...

How important is mastering information and communication technologies (ICT) in modern labor markets? We present the first evidence on this question, drawing on unique data that provide internationally comparable information on ICT skills in 19 countries. Our identification strategy relies on the...

Is human capital a robust predictor of good institutions? Using a new institutional quality measure, the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), we find that cognitive skill measures are significant, robust, and large in magnitude. We use two databases of cognitive skills: estimates of...