Ausgangspunkt für dieses Discussion Paper sind fehlende Erkenntnisse über Wissenstransfer in den Sozialwissenschaften. Die Sozialwissenschaften erbringen bereits zahlreiche Transferleistungen für die Gesellschaft, die jedoch in den gesellschaftlichen und den wissenschaftlichen Diskursen kaum...

This paper discusses the problems facing the Mexican economy. It operates under a heavy burden of monopoly and regulation. We focus on two issues that should receive more attention in discussions of Mexican policy. (1) The family is under stress in Mexico and this retards the growth of skills of...

Europeans restricted their fertility long before the Demographic Transition. By raising the marriage age of women and ensuring that a substantial proportion remained celibate, the "European Marriage Pattern" (EMP) reduced childbirths by up to one third between the 14th and 18th century. In a...

Social contracts about inequality and redistribution are country-specific. We rely on a model of inequality and redistribution where multiple steady states can emerge in given country. We link the model to the recent literature on beliefs and argue that beliefs are a major determinant of which...

This paper provides among the first rigorous estimates of the labor-market returns to community college certificates and diplomas, as well as estimating the returns to the more commonly-studied associate's degrees. Using administrative data from Kentucky, we estimate panel-data models that...

In an 80-country panel since the 1960s, the convergence rate for per capita GDP is around 1.7% per year. This "beta convergence" is conditional on an array of explanatory variables that hold constant countries' long-run characteristics. The introduction of country fixed effects generates a much...