Germany has always been one of the prime examples of institutional complementarities between social insurance, a rather passive welfare state, strong employment protection and collective bargaining that stabilize diversified quality production. This institutional arrangement was criticized for...

This article analyses IMF estimates of economic growth in 180 countries (IMF, 2009), and inks the results to the "Re-orient" approach, put forward by Frank, 1998. With global economic gravitation shifting to the Indian Ocean/Pacific region, the article also analyses the role of MNC (foreign...

Report based on a study conducted for the European Parliament, Bonn 2011 (87 pages)

We examine rational learning among expert chess players and how they update their beliefs in repeated games with the same opponent. We present a model that explains how equilibrium play is affected when players change their choice of strategy when receiving additional information from each...

In the neoclassical production functions model technical change (TC) is assumed to be exogenous and it is specified as a function of time. However, some exogenous external factors other than time can also affect the rate of TC. In this paper we model TC via a combination of time trend (purely...

This study analyzes mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) victim data in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq during the period of the 1960s to 2005. In addition to descriptive analysis of the data, we use regression analysis to identify the determinants of the probability of getting killed by a mine or...

This paper estimates the gender wage gap and its composition in China's urban labor market using the 2009 survey data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies. Several estimation and decomposition methods have been used and compared. First, we examine the gender wage gap using ordinary least square...

As China exhibited unprecedented rapid economic growth ever since its reform and openness, the development and sources of labor productivity has gradually come to the forefront. This paper studies the development and the source of labor productivity in 31 Chinese provinces during the period of...

In this article, we present a first empirical reflection on 'smart development', its measurement, possible 'drivers' and 'bottlenecks'. We first provide cross-national data on how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to 'deliver' a given amount of democracy,...

Report based on a study conducted for the European Parliament, Bonn 2010 (95 pages)