One reason why countries service their external debts is the fear that default might lead to shrinkage of international trade. If so, then creditors should systematically lend more to countries with which they share closer trade links. We develop a simple theoretical model to capture this...

Im Oktober 1998 befragte das ZEW rund 250 Finanzexperten aus Banken, Versicherungen, Kapitalanlagegesellschaften und großen Industrieunternehmen nach ihren Empfehlungen zur Gestaltung eines Vermögensportfolios zur Altersvorsorge. Dieses Papier untersucht in einem ersten Schritt, ob in...

The huge amount of white elephants in East Germany suggests the search for a statistical figure for an "efficient" level of investment. Following the Mankiw/Romer/Weil (1992) augmented Solow model and the studies of Borensztein/Montiel (1992) and Thimann (1996) and applying the results of a...

This paper reassesses the pattern of unemployment in interwar Britain from a microeconomic perspective. A 10 per cent sample of some 27,000 case record cards completed in 1929-31 as part of the New Survey of London Life and Labour is used as a basis for cross-section analysis of unemployment...

Many large universities require freshman to live in dormitories on the basis that living on campus leads to better classroom performance and lower drop out incidence. Large universities also provide a number of academic services in dormitories such as tutoring and student organizations that...

This paper applies a pairwise approach to investigate the validity of the law of one price in the crude oil markets. Price differentials appear smaller between crude oil pairs with similar physical/chemical characteristics and also for pairs within OPEC.

We adopt time-series and cross-section methods to analyse long-term relationships between pairs of crude oil prices and assess how physical and institutional factors affect their speed of reaction to exogenous shocks. Using a methodological approach which does not require identifying specific...

The forest transition (FT) hypothesis implies that changes in a region's forest cover follow a determinable pattern of decline and later re-expansion over time, which is supposed to be similar across regions and countries. Such a uniform pattern – if empirically proven and quantified – might...

The first part of the report contains a broad overview of the literature on foreign direct investment (FDI), with emphasis on the determinants of FDI in transition economies. The second part of the report presents the outcomes of an empirical investigation into the determinants of direct...