A political miracle occurred when Germany was reunited, and at first glance an economic miracle has followed. Real incomes in the east have now reached the western level, and investment per capita has been much higher than in the west. However, every third deutschmark spent in the east has been...

This paper compares the role innovation plays in productivity across the four European countries France, Germany, Spain and the UK using firm-level data from the internationally harmonized Community Innovation Surveys (CIS3). Despite a considerable number of national firm-level studies analysing...

We construct company panel datasets for manufacturing firms in Belgium, France, Germany and the UK, covering the period 1978-89. These datasets are used to estimate a range of empirical investment equations, and to investigate the role played by financial factors in each country. A robust...

Squaring hourly demand and wind-solar production data for Germany and a number of neighbouring countries with the results of the EU's ESTORAGE project, this paper studies the limits of Germany's energy revolution in view of the volatility of wind and solar power. In addition to pumped storage,...

This paper proposes a framework to account for innovation similar to the usual accounting framework in production analysis and a measure of innovativity comparable to that of total factor productivity. This innovation accounting framework is illustrated using micro-aggregated firm data from the...

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...

We investigate how labor and investment demand at the firm level (gross as well as net and replacement investment separately) differs in French, German and U.S. manufacturing, and has changed since the 1974-75 crisis. We use three consistent panel data samples of large firms for1970-79, and rely...

The upcoming demographic crisis in Germany demands fundamental reforms of the pension system. In a democracy, reforms are, however, only feasible when they are supported by the majority of the electorate. To determine whether the majority is in favor of reforms of the pension system, we...

Based on explicit present value calculations, the paper criticizes the view that the PAYGO system wastes economic resources. In present value terms, there is nothing to be gained from a transition to funded system even though the latter offers a permanently higher rate of return. The sum of the...

We estimate separate productions functions for approximately 450 manufacturing firms each in France and the United States and for 850 manufacturing firms in Japan, covering the 13 year period 1967-1979, and focus on the wide dispersion in the estimated slope coefficients in all three countries....