Social welfare spending on health, welfare, and insurance against adverse outcomes expanded a great deal in all of the developed countries during the 20th century. The institutional structure of the spending varies with respect to the extent that governments or market institutions provide the...

The extent of social expenditures in the U.S. and the Nordic Countries is compared in the early 1900s and again in the early 2000s. The common view that America spends much less on social welfare than the Nordic countries does not survive closer inspection when we consider the differences in the...

"In this paper we propose a new approach to international comparisons of real GDP measured from the output-side. The traditional Geary-Khamis system to measure real GDP from the expenditure-side is modified to include differences in the terms of trade between countries. It is shown that this...

"Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, we study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. Our focus is on regulations governing entry. We find entry regulations hamper entry, especially in industries that naturally should have...

Over the last twenty years the wage-education relationships in the US and Germany have evolved very differently, while the education composition of employment has evolved in a surprisingly parallel fashion. In this paper, we propose and test an explanation to these conflicting patterns. The...