The effect of changes in demographic structure on medium-run trends of key macroeconomic variables is estimated using a Panel VAR of 21 OECD economies. The panel data variability assists the identification of direct effects of demographics, while the dynamic structure uncovers long-term effects....

We use data on wages and rents in different U.S. cities to assess the amenity effects on production and consumption of cultural diversity as measured by diversity of countries of birth of city residents. We show that US-born citizens living in metropolitan areas where the share of foreign-born...

We examine the impact of demographic structure, the proportion of the population in each age group, on growth, savings, investment, hours, interest rates and inflation using a panel VAR estimated from data for 20 OECD economies, mainly for the period 1970-2007. This flexible dynamic structure...

This research empirically establishes the hypothesis that the process of population aging in a society as a whole affects the attitudes of its members towards immigration. Hence, an aging social environment exerts an effect on the attitudes of individuals towards immigration after accounting for...

This paper presents new evidence on how demography affects democratic attitudes in Western democracies. Using individual survey responses, the empirical analysis disentangles age from cohort patterns and other contemporaneous economic and political influences that shape democratic attitudes. The...

Empirically, compensation systems generate substantial effort despite weak monetary incentives. We consider reciprocal motivations as a source of incentives. We solve for the optimal contract in the basic principal-agent problem and show that reciprocal motivations and explicit performance-based...

This paper explored the determinants of survival in a life and death situation created by an external and unpredictable shock. We are interested to see whether pro-social behaviour matters in such extreme situations. We therefore focus on the sinking of the RMS Titanic as a quasi-natural...

Building on a new data set which is combined from national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries, viz. France, Germany, the UK and the US, which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source...

Since 1997, the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has met monthly to set the UK policy interest rate. We examine evidence of systematic patterns in exchange rate movements on MPC days over the first decade of operation of the MPC. Daily data reveal significant differences in...

For a long time, migration has been subject to intensive economic research. Nevertheless, empirical evidence regarding the determinants of migration still appears to be incomplete. In this paper, we analyze the effects of socio-economic and institutional determinants, especially labor-market...