Arguably, one of the most important developments in the field of applied economics during the last decades has been the emergence of systematic policy evaluation, with its distinct focus on the establishment of causality. By contrast to the natural sciences, the objects of our scientific...

The request for a strengthening of academic research at the German economic research institutes by the German Science Council more than a decade ago was founded on the crucial insight that sound policy advice the traditional task of the institutes can only be guaranteed in the long term if it is...

A new generation of data sets became available recently in the research data centres of the German statistical offices. These new data combine information for firms gathered in different surveys (or from other sources) that could not be analyzed jointly before. This paper offers a short...

In a survey published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Frege (2002) evaluates research on the German works council from the perspective of several disciplines, including economics. Ultimately, she concludes that economic analysis of the works council has reached a ?dead end?. The...

This paper focuses on the importance data issues to the analysis of growth, poverty and economic inequality. We introduce a number of major databases frequently used in applied research on growth, poverty and global and international inequality. A discussion of data quality, data consistency,...

Given the recent efforts in several countries to reorganize the research institutional setting to improve research productivity, our analysis addresses the following questions: To which extent has the recent awareness over international quality standards in economics around the world been...

Conferences are an important element in the work of researchers, requiring substantial investments in fees, travel expenses and the time spent by the participants. The aim of this paper is to identify the preferences of participants with respect to conference characteristics. Based on a sample...

This essay reviews progress in empirical economics since Leamer's (1983) critique. Leamer highlighted the benefits of sensitivity analysis, a procedure in which researchers show how their results change with changes in specification or functional form. Sensitivity analysis has had a salutary but...

In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to...

The proportion female in the economics profession in the U.S. has been low historically compared with other disciplines. Although the percentage of Ph.D. degrees awarded to women and the representation of women on faculties have increased over time, economics still lags many other fields....