This study examines the issue of whether managerial social capital, defined as aggregate benefits of social obligations and informal contacts formed through social networks, has an impact on financial development. Utilizing a large cross-country sample for the period 1999– 2012, we provide...

Katharina Wedel prepared this study while she was working at the Center for the Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2023 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays that...

In Europe differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs - increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal...