Theory suggests that the cross-border bank lending flow from rich countries to poor countries is facilitated when lending-related legal and social norms are shared and valued equally by both lenders and borrowers. According to this reasoning the fast adoption of Western-style democracy and...

Based on a structural model for initial firm size, survival and firm growth we estimate firm-specific transition probabilities between size classes of the firm size distribution. This allows an assessment of the impact of different (counterfactual) economic policy measures on intra-distribution...

This paper analyses the change in the Austrian business cycle over time using data back to 1954. The change in the cyclical pattern is captured using a nonlinear univariate structural time series model where the time of the break point is estimated. Results for GDP series suggest a break in the...

Policies to reduce the gender pay gap feature prominently on the political agenda and interventions in the labour market are frequently proposed, claiming a persistent wage gap. We examine the change of the gender wage gap in Austria between 2002 and 2007 with new data from administrative...

Does the low wage sector serve as a stepping stone towards integration into better-paid jobs or at least towards integration of jobless people into employment? There is evidence for a "low-wage trap" and for a high risk of low-wage earners to get unemployed, but this may also be due to sorting...

EU climate and energy policy defines ambitious objectives for the EU member countries requiring a fundamental change of energy systems. This paper suggests basing the analysis of restructuring options on energy services instead of energy flows. In order to provide the energy services in a...

Sick workers in many countries receive sick pay during their illness-related absences from the workplace. In several countries, the social security system insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. However, this insurance may create moral hazard problems for firms, leading to the...

Stylised facts suggest that there is some "spatial structure" in the dynamics of cross-border lending of Austrian regional banks that seems to be closely related to the eastward enlargement of the European Union. This short paper provides evidence that a stark space-related dependency of...

In this paper I analyse the export behaviour of firms located in different Central European countries (Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia) with respect to migration. Ever since the seminal article by Gould (1994) on immigrant links to their home country and due to empirical research...

The fast adoption of Western-style democracy and market economy principles as established by EU standards by many of the Eastern European "transformation countries" since the early 1990s should have raised cross-border lending by banks based in "old" EU member countries to clients resident in...