In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus...

What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust? To answer this question, we use the reunification of Germany as a natural experiment and study the post-reunification trajectory of convergence with regard to individuals' trust and risk, as well...

This paper uses nonparametric techniques to study GDP convergence across German labor market regions and counties during the period 1992-2004. The main result is that regional convergence in unified Germany has been substantial. In the first years after German unification the distribution of GDP...

The level of trust inherent in a society is important for a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper investigates how individuals' attitudes toward social and institutional trust are shaped by the political regime in which they live. The German reunification is a unique...

Persistence of high youth unemployment and dismal labour market outcomes are imminent concerns for most European economies. The relationship between demographic ageing and employment outcomes is even more worrying once the relationship is scrutinized at the regional level. We focus on modelling...

This paper shows that 19th-century industrialization is an important determinant of the significant changes in Germany’s economic geography observed in recent decades. Using novel data on economic activity in 163 labor market regions in West Germany, we establish that nearly half of them...

Labor force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar, however full-time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax transfer-system, we perform a comparative...

We address the impact of education upon wage inequality by drawing on evidence from fifteen European countries, during a period ranging between 1980 and 1995. We focus on within-educational-levels wage inequality by estimating quantile regressions of Mincer equations and analysing the...

Trade and migration have become more important in recent years for Austria and Germany. The transition in Central and Eastern Europe has played an important role in this development. The derived labor market consequences are not fully clear so far. This paper presents the results of econometric...

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse foruniversity admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists ofthree procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren","Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting...