The CobbDouglas function is today one of the most widely adopted assumptions in economic modeling, yet both its theoretical and empirical bases have long been under question. This paper builds an alternative function on very different (albeit also neoclassical) microfoundations aimed at both...

Using available annual data of 174 economies since 1957, we examine the similarities and differences of seven international reserve ratios. While individual international reserve ratios display substantial variations across economies, they are associated with an economy?s characteristics...

Im ifo Schnelldienst sollen einige bedeutende Industrie- und Schwellenländer anhand wichtiger Globalisierungsindikatoren vorgestellt werden. Die Analyse beschränkt sich auf die Jahre ab 2001 bis zum aktuellen Rand. Die Reihe beginnt mit diesem Beitrag zu Deutschland.

Seit der Revison 2005 der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnungen verwendet das Statistische Bundesamt eine neue Deflationierungsmethode auf gleitender Preisbasis bei der Berechnung des preisbereinigten Bruttoinlandsproduktes. Welche Vor- und Nachteile sind mit dieser Neuerung verbunden? Welche...

Some countries fail to ensure that their citizens and businesses make an appropriate contribution to the financing of public tasks. But not all countries with a low tax ratio automatically fall into this category. This paper presents an approach to bridge the gap between probabilistic statements...

Estimations of the shadow economies for 145 countries, including developing, transition and highly developed OECD economies over 1999 to 2005 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2004/05 in 96 developing countries is 36.7%, in 25 transition...

Regressions and tests performed on data from Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) 2004 survey show that personal or household experience of bribery is not a good predictor of perceptions held about corruption among the general population. In contrast, perceptions about...

This paper surveys the current state of global empirical research on price setting behaviour at the firm level to evaluate the adequacy of pricing models used in the macro literature. To that end, it analyses the implications of 25 theoretical models (sticky information, menu costs, time...

211 estimates of the social cost of carbon are included in a meta-analysis. The results confirm that a lower discount rate implies a higher estimate; and that higher estimates are found in the gray literature. It is also found that there is a downward trend in the economic impact estimates of the...