Losing a parent is a trauma that has consequences for human capital formation. Does it matter at what age this trauma occurs? Using longitudinal data from the Kagera region in Tanzania that span thirteen years from 1991-2004, we find considerable impact heterogeneity across age at bereavement,...

We evaluate the impact of firm-specific export subsidies on exports in Colombia. Using a two-stage Heckman selection procedure, we obtain firm-specific predicted subsidy amounts that can be explained by the characteristics that determine the firms' eligibility for the government support and its...

Using a real-time data set for German GDP over the period from 1973 to 1998 we calculate various measures of real-time output gaps and use these to calibrate and estimate Taylor-type reaction functions for the Bundesbank. Most of the reaction functions we find fit the Bundesbank's actual policy,...

This paper presents a positive model which shows that institutional setups on capital and labor markets might be intertwined by politicoeconomic forces. Two politicoeconomic equilibria arise from our model, one with little protection of insiders on capital and labor markets, and another one with...

When nontraded goods prices are accounted for consistently and genuine stock data on bilateral foreign asset holdings is employed, a modified sticky-price exchange rate model by far outperforms the benchmark random walk-model in empirically forecasting the D-mark/dollar parity out of sample....

This note shows that German real GDP follows a trend-stationary process. Both tests which have trend-stationarity as the alternative hypothesis as well as tests that have it under the null hypothesis prefer the trend-stationary model. Explicit consideration of breaks in the trend is not...

This paper proposes an approach for estimating the uncertainty associated with model-based macroeconomic forecasts. We argue that estimated forecast intervals should account for the uncertainty arising from selecting the specification of an empirical forecasting model from the sample data. To...

The ongoing debate of the literature on learning-by-exporting is whether the conspicuously stellar performance of exporters relative to non-exporters can be, at least partially, attributed to the horizonwidening interaction with foreign consumers and learning of cost-efficient and quality...