Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have an asymmetric distribution of outcomes. In a series of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate the asymmetry or ignore it completely. Participants...

Despite considerable policy efforts, women continue to be underrepresented in positions of power and decision making. As an important aspect of women empowerment, we examine women's participation in intrahousehold financial decision making and how this is affected by financial literacy. Using...

Abstract This paper estimates a reduced-form model to assess the credit risk of General Insurance (GI) non-life firms in the UK. Compared to earlier studies, it uses a much larger sample including 30 years of data for 515 firms, and also considers a much wider set of possible determinants of...

This paper investigates whether male soccer tradition can predict the success of female soccer. Different from the existing literature, this paper utilizes panel data covering 175 countries during the 1991-2011 period, capturing country heterogeneity effects and time trends. An instrumental...

This paper examines the effects of Islamic banking on the causal linkages between credit and GDP by comparing two sets of seven emerging countries, the first without Islamic banks, and the second with a dual banking system including bothIslamic and conventional banks. Unlike previous studies, it...

The wage curve introduced by Blanchflower and Oswald (1990, 1994) postulates a negative correlation between wages and unemployment. Empirical results focus on particular theoretical channels establishing the relationship. Panel models mostly draw on unionized bargaining or the efficiency wage...

After the collapse in the early years of transition, saving rates in many EU-accession countries have recovered and remained stable during recent years. This may indicate that the transformation process has come to an end with regard to savings. Is saving behaviour in EU-accession countries now...

Private savings mirror consumption behavior. In Europe, the dynamic of consumption is very low, and at the same time, savings are increasing. Is this a result of macroeconomic policy? A GMM estimator is used to analyze the determinants of private saving in the EU?s 15 member states. Our main...

We investigate price index convergence on the base of regional data for 439 German districts. Prices refer to the overall consumer price index as well as to the index without housing prices. To increase the efficiency of the testing framework, a panel unit root analysis is performed, where cross...