This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

This study is the first to examine employment effects by gender in Austrian firms and thus provides insight into the role of Austrian firms engaged in foreign trade for women's labour market opportunities and participation in firms. Using a matched employer-employee dataset based on various...

Foreign trade and foreign direct investments (FDI) are key elements for economic development and growth of both a country and its regions. This paper focuses on foreign trade and FDI in Austrian regions (Bundesländer). Unfortunately, data on regional trade in Austria is only available on a very...

This policy brief introduces a method to estimate foreign trade of the nine Austrian NUTS-2 regions. The basic idea of the method is to disaggregate national foreign trade data to the regional level using national input-output, regional employment and other supplemental data. This allows for the...

This paper examines the causal link between foreign investment and firm performance in six small open economies in the European Union. Specifically, using micro data for manufacturing and services over the period 2001–2009, we analyse the effects of foreign mergers and acquisitions on labour...

The euro area economic crisis is largely a result of the competitiveness disparity between Germany and the rest of the euro area. The wage moderation in Germany has considerably improved its competitiveness in relation to the rest of the euro area. Wage policy has been deflationary in Germany in...

Information and communications technology, global value chains, and population ageing are changing the structures of the labour market. These three factors affect the tasks carried out in Finland in the future and the division of labour between humans and computers. The changes are taking place...

This paper explores offshoring of firms’ research and development functions. Our analysis employs a previously untapped and unique Eurostat International Sourcing Survey. The results are easy to summarize. First, the magnitude of R&D offshoring is small. Second, a large majority of R&D is...

Both the current economic situation and the short-term growth outlook of virtually all countries in transition are better than at any time during the last decade. Driven by higher import demand from the EU, the Central and East European countries are enjoying an export boom which fuels their GDP...