This paper uses a large plant level panel data set from Germany and a matching approach to look for causal effects of starting to export on plant performance. We find positive effects on growth of employment, labor productivity, and wages.

Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

This study was prepared by Stefan Lachenmaier while he was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in March 2007 and was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Department of the University of Munich (LMU). The subject of this study is an econometric...