We provide evidence indicating that countries with well-developed social security systems do not necessarily face a trade-off between social spending and competitiveness. On average, countries that spend a lot on social needs score well in the competitiveness league. We investigate the...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) as a driver of growth is important in today´s globalized economy. It is extremely difficult for economies to grow sustainably without economic interactions outside their borders. However, there has been a debate on the impact of FDI inflow on economic expansion....

This paper addresses the impact of rising international trade exposure on individual earnings profiles in heterogeneous worker-establishment matches. We exploit rich panel data on job biographies of manufacturing workers in Germany, and apply a high-dimensional fixed effects approach to analyze...

We study the impact of trade exposure in the job biographies, measured with daily accuracy, of 2.4 million workers in Germany. To profit from export opportunities, workers adjust through increased employer switching. Highly skilled workers benefit the most, consistent with an increase in skill...

We examine how trade openness influences income inequality within countries. The sample includes 139 countries over the period 1970-2014. We employ predicted openness as instrument to deal with the endogeneity of trade openness. The effect of trade openness on income inequality differs across...

The multivariate technique of factor analysis is used to combine several indicators of economic integration and international transactions into a single measure or index of globalization. The index is an alternative to the simple measure of openness based on trade, and it produces a ranking of...

We examine how trade openness influences income inequality within countries. The sample includes 139 countries over the period 1970-2014. We employ predicted openness as instrument to deal with the endogeneity of trade openness. The effect of trade openness on income inequality differs across...

This paper investigates the effects of a global uncertainty shock in open economies and the role of country relative risk exposure in the transmission of the shock. We employ an Interacted VAR model to take the time-varying dimension of country relative risk exposure into account. Evidence of...

Does trade openness systematically imply bigger governments, as proposed by Rodrik (1998)? This paper presents a novel and more refined explanation for when and why international trade may enlarge the public sector. We propose that trade openness is associated with bigger governments if (i) the...