Estimations of the size and development of the shadow economy for 145 countries, including developing, transition and highly developed OECD economies over the period 1999 to 2003 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of official GDP) in 2002/03 in 96 developing...

Our objective is to analyse the role of teacher and school quality to explain differences in students' educational outcomes. With this aim, we use PISA microdata for 10 middle income and 2 high income countries and we apply decomposition methods in order to identify the role of these factors for...

We study theoretically and empirically how consumers in an individual private longterm health insurance market with front-loaded contracts respond to newly mandated portability requirements of their old-age provisions. To foster competition, effective 2009, the German legislature made the...

EU enlargement is supposed to entail profound impact on the location of economic activities in Europe. Although there is concern about the implications of enlargement for regional disparities in the EU, corresponding empirical results are still rare. The objective of this analysis is to provide...