Differences in regional labour market conditions are still pronounced in Germany, especially between the Eastern and the Western part. Traditional neoclassical models imply that labour mobility should reduce disparities. In contrast, models that include externalities or selective migration...

This paper investigates whether financial market experts correctly perceive the reaction function of the European Central Bank (ECB) with respect to macroeconomic variables. Using survey expectations of financial market experts, we explain the individual interest rate forecast errors within the...

A large body of literature on the estimation of private returns to R&D adopts the Griliches knowledge production framework, ignoring the impact omitted spillover effects may have on consistent estimation. A separate body of literature is primarily interested in the presence and magnitude of...

The German health care reform of 2004 imposes a charge of 10 Euro for the first visit to a doctor in each quarter of the year. Exploiting random variation in the interview day of the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study finds a substantial effect of the new fee on the probability of visiting...

Bun and Klaassen (2007) investigate the impact of the introduction of Euro on bilateral trade. Accounting for deterministic trends in the residuals of the gravity equation they estimate an Euro effect of about 3%, smaller than previous estimates in the range of 5% to 40%. In this paper we...

We analyse the effect of a change in the remuneration system for physicians on the lengths of treatments of patients as measured by the number of doctor visits using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 1988- 2003. In particular, we analyse the introduction of a fixed budget...

This paper interprets economic growth as a sequence of transitions between four growth regimes: crisis, stagnation, stable growth, and miracle growth. Countries experience distinct patterns of growth because they switch between the growth regimes with different frequencies. The aim of this paper...

While risk selection within the German public health insurance system has received considerable attention, risk selection between public and private health insurers has largely been ignored. This is surprising since - given the institutional structure - risk selection between systems is likely...