Although immigration of workers generates a positive externality on members of domestic pension systems, many countries are very reluctant to allow foreigners into their labor markets. In a political economic framework, we explain this voting outcome by considering a young unskilled median voter...

The paper presents univariate and panel unit root tests for gasoline and oil price convergence over the last decade. We test for the absolute versus relative version of the LOOP and estimate the speed of convergence as well as its development over time. Our results show that the absolute version...

In der öffentlichen und politischen Debatte wird Zuwanderung als eine Möglichkeit diskutiert, das Problem der Alterung von Gesellschaften abzumildern. Gleichzeitig lassen sich zum Teil sehr starke Widerstände gegen Zuwanderung feststellen. In den letzten Jahren hat sich auch dieWissenschaft...

The paper presents a model of two countries competing for the international pool of talented students from the rest of the world. To relax tuition-fee competition, countries differentiate their education systems in equilibrium, albeit inefficiently. One country offers high educational quality at...

This paper looks at the effect of the relatedness of two countries, measured by their genetic distance, on educational migrant selection. We analyze bilateral country-level education-specific migration stocks from 85 sending countries to the 15 main destination countries in 2000 and show that...

This contribution studies the impact of modernization on the onset of Islamist conflict. To capture the multi-dimensional phenomenon of modernization, we create a unique modernization index. Our empirical analysis for 154 countries for the 1971-2006 period provides robust evidence that...

This paper looks at the effect of the relatedness of two countries, measured by their genetic distance, on educational migrant selection. We analyze bilateral country-level education-specific migration stocks from 85 sending countries to the 15 main destination countries in 2000 and show that...

"Land grabbing" or, less emotionally charged, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA), which occur mainly in the Global South, have become the center of a heated political and academic debate. So far, economists have mostly abstained from this debate. This may possibly be explained by the fact that...

In this contribution we study the relationship between income inequality and economic freedom for a panel of 100 countries for the 1971-2010 period. From a panel causality study we find that income inequality has a negative causal effect on economic freedom, while causation does not run in the...