Traders in global markets operate at different local times-of-day. Suboptimal times-of-day may produce sleepiness due to daily variations in sleep/wake patterns and possibly also increased accumulation of hours awake. Global asset markets imply significantly increased heterogeneity in circadian...

This paper investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, linked through an interaction structure, choose how to interpret and recall public signals about future prospects. Wishful thinking (denial of bad news) is...

This study addresses the measurement of two composite Lisbon strategy indices that quantifies the level and patterns of development for ranking countries. The first index is nonparametric labelled as Lisbon strategy index (LSI). It is composed of six components: general economics, employment,...

This paper combines different strands of the productivity literature to investigate the effect of idiosyncratic (firm-level) policy distortions on aggregate outcomes. On the one hand, a growing body of empirical research has been relating cross-country differences in key economic outcomes, such...

This paper documents gender disparities in labor earnings for sixty-four countries around the world. Disparities are partially attributed to gender differences in observable socio-demographic and job characteristics. These characteristics are used to match males and females such that gender...

New institutionalism has had considerable success during the last decade in shepherding the debate on sustained economic development. If the sociopolitical, legal and economic transformations in the Anglo-Saxon world in the last three decades prove anything, however, it is that the late Mancur...

Germany's recovery from an unemployment disease and its resilience to the Great Recession is remarkable. Its success story makes it a showcase for labor policy and labor market reforms. This paper assesses the potential of the German experience as a model for effective, evidence-based...

Cross-national differences in outcomes are often analysed using regression analysis of multilevel country datasets, examples of which include the ECHP, ESS, EU-SILC, EVS, ISSP, and SHARE. We review the regression methods applicable to this data structure, pointing out problems with the...

This paper highlights the employment patterns of China’s over 45 population and, for perspective, places them in the context of work and retirement patterns in Indonesia, Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom. As is common in many developing countries, China can be characterized as...