We hypothesize that North-South trade is associated with knowledge spillovers that create labor productivity gains depending on various determinants of Southern absorptive capacity. We use the novel World Input-Output Database (WIOD) that provides bilateral and bisectoral panel data for 39...

Firms invest huge amounts into intangible assets. This paper explores to which extent different kinds of intangible assets are conducive to firm-level productivity. Our study contributes to the literature by simultaneously comparing productivity effects of innovative capital, human capital,...

Motivated by Manski and Tamer (2002) and especially their partial identification analysis of the regression model where one covariate is only interval-measured, we offer several contributions. Manski and Tamer (2002) propose two estimation approaches in this context, focusing on general results....

We investigate how competition in product niches affects the ultimate timing of product release for experience goods using data on motion pictures in the United States. We identify product niches that movies occupy along three different product dimensions: common actor, common director, and...

Peer influence through word-of-mouth (WOM) plays an important role in many information systems but identification of causal effects is challenging. We identify causal WOM effects in the empirical setting of game adoption in a social network for gamers by exploiting differences in individuals'...

Reference price systems for prescription drugs constitute widely adopted cost containment tools. In these systems, patients co-pay a fraction of the difference between a drug's pharmacy retail price and a reference price that is set by the government. Reference prices are either determined...

This paper studies the importance of employer-specific determinants in escaping low earnings in Germany. To address the initial conditions problem and the endogeneity of employer retention, we model (intra-firm) low-pay transitions using a multivariate Probit model that accounts for selection...

This paper investigates why financial market experts misperceive the interest rate policy of the European Central Bank (ECB). Assuming a Taylor-rule-type reaction function of the ECB, we use qualitative survey data on expectations about the future interest rate, inflation, and output to discover...

Leniency programs as a tool for cartel detection and cartel destabilization, have been implemented since the early nineties. Theoretical work has shown that leniency programs can be eff ective in enhancing cartel detection and deterrence, but these e ffects are not straight-forward. It is even...

In this paper, we study how wage mobility in the low-wage sector has changed in western Germany between 1984 and 2004. Using German individual register data, we document a clear upward trend in the persistence of low-wage employment for both men and women. Next to compositional shifts of the...