Eastern enlargement of the EU promises gains, but also imposes fiscal costs on incumbent countries. A sensitive issue concerns immigration, jobs and wages. We address these issues in a general equilibrium framework, both analytically and through numerical simulations. Analytical results identify...

Political risk represents an important hidden transaction cost that reduces international trade. This paper investigates the claim that German public export credit guarantees (Hermes guarantees) mitigate this friction to trade flows and hence promote exports. We employ an empirical trade gravity...

This paper analyses the relationship between firm productivity and export behavior in German manufacturing firms. We examine whether productivity increases the probability of exporting, and assert that there is a causal relationship from high productivity to entering foreign markets, as...

Politicians travel extensively abroad, for various reasons. One purpose of external visits is to improve bilateral economic relations. In this paper, I examine the effect of state visits on international trade. I use a large data set covering the travel activities of the heads of state of...

Im Zeitraum 2009 bis 2011 waren rd. 1,3 Mio. Unternehmen aus Deutschland, zu 99 % KMU, international aktiv. Damit besaßen rund 37 % aller Unternehmen direkte Auslandskontakte (bei Berücksichtigung indirekter Kontaktformen: 44 %). Am häufigsten unterhielten die Unternehmen Im- und...

This paper studies the relationship between export activities and firm-level productivity. Unique matching of German and Austrian micro data from 1994 to 2003 suggests that exporters are more productive by around 40 percent compared with non-exporters. Moreover, beside other analysis techniques,...

Die deutsch-russischen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen haben sich seit den 1990er Jahren fast unbemerkt von der (medialen) Öffentlichkeit positiv weiterentwickelt. Russland wurde zwar als G8-Mitglied und eines der wichtigen Schwellenländer der BRIC-Gruppe wahrgenommen, mehr Aufmerksamkeit genoss...

Ziel dieser Studie ist es zu evaluieren ob und in welchem Ausmaß vergangene Handelsliberalisierungen zu einer Steigerung von Handel, zu einer Erhöhung der Beschäftigung und zu höheren Löhnen in Deutschland beigetragen haben. Dabei wird besonders auf die Bedeutung des Außenhandels auf den...

We use newly available representative panel data for manufacturing enterprises in West and East Germany to investigate the link between production-related subsidies and exports. We document that only a small fraction of enterprises is subsidized, and that exports and subsidies are positively...