During the 90s the increase in health spending which compared to the overall growth had taken place at a rather rapid pace experienced a worldwide slow-down. In relation to overall economic growth and the expansion of other countries' health care systems, Austria's system grew below average- a...

This paper evaluates the impact of economic and legal variables on wage differentials between men and women. Since Becker (1957) economists have argued that competitive markets eliminate discrimination in the long run. On the other hand, practically all countries have enacted some sort of law...

This paper proposes a strategy to increase the efficiency of forecast combination. Given the availability of a wide range of forecasts for the same variable of interest, our goal is to apply combining methods to a restricted set of models. To this aim, a hierarchical procedure based on an...

Using the DYMIMIC approach, estimates of the shadow economy in 110 developing, transition and developed OECD countries are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) over 1999-2000 in developing countries is 41%, in transition countries 38% and in OECD...

During the last years, gravity equations have leapt from the trade literature over into the literature on financial markets. Martin and Rey (2004) were the first to provide a theoretical model for cross-border asset trade, yielding a structural gravity equation that could be tested empirically....

The lack of comprehensive, international comparable wage data has been deplored for decades and has constrained the empirical analysis of wage growth and inequality. This is the case although, since 1924, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has conducted an October Inquiry to obtain data...

While quantifying the foreign ownership premium has received a lot of attention in the empirical literature, there is only little known about productivity variations between foreign affiliates of multinational firms. In order to enhance the understanding of the economic causes of this...