This paper tries to explain the declining level of public investment in OECD countries. The theoretical framework hints to the relevance of a number of demand and supply factors - ranging from the yield of public investment to institutions like the EU deficit limits. The econometric results...

We study the cyclicality of public R&D in 28 OECD countries (1995-2017). While procyclical on average, public R&D reacts asymmetrically over different phases of the business cycle and becomes acyclical during recessions. It is also heterogeneous across countries: Innovation leaders and followers...

This paper describes the changes in economic policies and in macroeconomic conditions in the 1990s and analyses their impact on the agricultural sector in Brazil. We emphasize four aspects of the reform period that were either unexpected or not given sufficient attention by authors writing in...

At the start of the German unification process it was a commonly held view that east German living conditions will converge to west Geman levels within a few years. This view was not only held by notoriously optimistic politicians but also by a great many of professional economists. With...

Reputation indexes of employment protection have proven popular constructs in studies of the covariation of labor market institutions and macroeconomic outcomes. Portugal occupies an unenviable rank order in such measures of the stringency of employment protection. We critique this reputation in...