We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool industry fled the Soviet occupied zone to prevent expropriation. We show that the regional location decisions...

Political regimes influence contents of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students. We study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in East...

This paper examines the impact of exposure to foreign media on the economic behavior of agents in a totalitarian regime. We study private consumption choices focusing on former East Germany, where differential access to Western television was determined by geographic features. Using data...

This paper advances the hypothesis that the EUS crisis was caused by German unification. The unification has implied a massive resource demand which parallels the US resource demand following Reagan's tax reforms in the eighties. The resource demand revised the German interest rates relative to...

In this paper we emphasize the contribution of technical change, broadly defined, towards productivity growth in explaining the relative East Germany-West Germany performance during the post-World War II era. We argue that previous work was excessively focused on physical capital investments...

This paper develops a novel procedure for proxying economic activity with day-time satellite imagery across time periods and spatial units, for which reliable data on economic activity are otherwise not available. In developing this unique proxy, we apply machine-learning techniques to a...

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Netherlands experienced a strong increase in the labourforce participation of women. This study investigates the increase of participation over thesuccessive generations of women, and produces an educated guess for future participation.For this purpose, we...

The paper deals with child labour in developing countries. We address a problem that hasrecently drawn much attention at the international level, that is, how to invest in women´srights to advance the rights of both women and children. We study the problem from a newperspective. In our...

Female labor force participation has remained low in Egypt. This paper examines whether male international migration provides a leeway for women to enter the labor market and/or to increase their labor supply. In line with previous studies, we find a decrease in wage work in both rural and urban...

This paper studies the effect of mothers' education on fertility in a population with very low female labor force participation. The results we present are particularly relevant to many countries in the Muslim world where 70-80 percent of women are still out of the labor force. For...