This paper analyses the effects of discretionary fiscal policy by presenting new empiricalevidence for Germany within a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) framework. FollowingBlanchard and Perotti (2002), the SVAR model is identified by applying institutionalinformation. We find no...

We investigate to what extent convergence in production levels per worker has beenachieved in Germany since unification. To this end, we model the distributionof GDP per employee across German districts using two-component normal mixtures.While in the first year after unification, the two...

Leicht ist man geneigt, zu glauben, daß die Begeisterung über die Fußball-WM im Zusammenspiel mit jüngsten politischen Kampagnen ("Du bist Deutschland") und aktuellen patriotismusfördernden Publikationen (Matussek, 2006, Langenscheidt, 2006) tatsächlich eine Wesensveränderung bei einer...

This paper explores the impact of gender differences in the desire for sex and the distribution of power in the household on the onset of the demographic transition and the take-off to growth. Depending on the price and efficacy of modern contraceptives, the gender wage gap, and female...

We set up a three-period overlapping generation model in which young individuals allocate their time to schooling and work, healthy middle aged individuals allocate their time to leisure and work and their income to consumption and savings for retirement, and old age individuals live off their...

This paper develops a bio-economic Malthusian growth model. By integrating recent research on allometric scaling, energy consumption, and ontogenetic growth we provide a model where subsistence consumption is endogenously linked to body mass and fertility. The theory admits a two-dimensional...

We investigate the effects of human capital accumulation on trade and productivity by integrating a micro-founded education and fertility decision of households into a model of international trade with firm heterogeneity. Our theoretical framework leads to two testable implications: i) the...

We generalize a trade model with firm-specific heterogeneity and R&D-based growth to allow for an endogenous education decision of households and an endogenously evolving population. Our framework is able to explain cross-country differences in living standards and trade intensities by the...

It is a well known fact that economic development and distance to the equator are positively correlated variables in the world today. It is perhaps less well known that as recently as 1500 C.E. it was the other way around. The present paper provides a theory of why the 'latitude gradient'...