Over the past 50 years, the U.S. and several European labor markets have undergone two most incisive developments: job market polarization and deunionization. In this paper, we argue that routine-biased technical change is not only the driving force behind polarization, as prevalently assumed,...

Trade unions distort a profit-maximising firm's input choice. The nature of the resulting inefficiency depends on whether there is wage or efficient bargaining. Moreover, trade unions redistribute income and thereby affect welfare. If firms also pursue Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)...

In this paper we investigate the relevance of bargaining institutions for the decline of the labor share. Several explanations for the decline exist, which consider the relevance of technology, globalization and markups. Neglected so far is the influence of bargaining institutions, in particular...

In the recent past, interest of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) policies to influence the innovation behaviour of firms has been increased considerably. This gives rise to the notion of behavioural additionality, broadening traditional evaluation concepts of input and output...

Crime risk perception is known to be an important determinant of individuals' well being. Therefore, it is crucial, especially for governments, to understand its determinants and those (public) policies that can reduce it. Among those polices, resources devoted to police forces emerge as a key...

This paper provides a contribution to the debate on the role of EU cohesion policy in Italy. The focus is on the territorial effects of EU spending from 1996 to 2007. The empirical analysis considers a neoclassical growth model which is augmented by the structural funds spent by each region....

We study the impact of fiscal rules on macroeconomic performance following natural disaster shocks, using dynamic panel models and quarterly data for 89 countries. We find that countries with fiscal rules perform significantly better in the aftermath of such shocks than countries without rules....

We study the cyclicality of public R&D in 28 OECD countries (1995 - 2017). While procyclical on average, public R&D reacts asymmetrically over different phases of the business cycle and becomes acyclical during recessions. It is also heterogeneous across countries: Innovation leaders and...