It is generally agreed that the funding base for German universities is inadequate and perhaps the time has come for serious consideration of the imposition of non-trivial tuition charges. Against this background, this paper compares conventional and income contingent loans for financing tuition...

In this paper, we study how wage mobility in the low-wage sector has changed in western Germany between 1984 and 2004. Using German individual register data, we document a clear upward trend in the persistence of low-wage employment for both men and women. Next to compositional shifts of the...

This paper examines whether the introduction of corporate governance (CG) reforms in general and that of transparency and disclosure (T&D) rules in particular can necessarily boost firm performance. Existing literature suggests that CG reforms can boost performance because it can resolve the...

We revisit the link between poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes using a newly developed cross-country panel dataset containing detailed information on the distribution of income and expenditures. When the size of the middle class increases (measured as the proportion of people...

This paper argues, in line with the proposals of the recent Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, that we should now be measuring a nation's emotional prosperity rather than its economic prosperity (that is, we ought to focus on the level of mental...

In the mid 2000s Ireland experienced a large inflow of immigrants, partly in response to strong economic growth but also in response to its decision to allow full access to its labour market when EU expansion occurred in May 2004. Between 2004 and 2007, the proportion of non-nationals living in...