Since the middle of the 1980s many European countries have reduced the strictness of their employment protection mainly by relaxing it for temporary jobs. These countries are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The article explores the...

To examine how human capital accumulation influences both economic growth and income inequality, we carefully endogenize the demand and supply of skills. We explicitly introduce the costs and externalities in education, and examine how both relate to learning-by-doing and R&D intensity. In...

Both global imbalances and financial market (de-)regulation feature prominently among the potential causes of the global financial crisis, but they have been largely discussed separately. In this paper, we take a different angle and investigate the relationship between financial market...

In this paper we examine the empirical relevance of three prominent endogenous protection models. Is protection for sale, or do altruistic policy makers worry about political support? We find strong evidence that protection is indeed for sale. The important new result is, however, that not only...

We examine multinationals optimal entry modes into foreign markets as a function of market size, FDI fixed costs, tariffs and transport costs. Our results highlight why large countries are more likely to attract acquisition investment, while intermediate-sized countries may be served...

Reforms of employment protection (EPL) in Europe eased the recourse to temporary forms of employment while not reducing the strictness of EPL of permanent jobs (with the exception of Spain). Since 1990, such two-tier reforms have been implemented in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the...