Lifelong learning is often promoted in ageing societies, but little is known about its returns or governments' ability to advance it. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in Switzerland. We find no significant average...

The German Federal government has allowed some regions (Approved Local Providers) to be solely responsible for the care of long-term unemployed. The remaining regions had to form Joint Local Agencies, where the local social benefit administrations work together with the local public employment...

Uncertainty about the level of demand is thought to influence irreversible capacity decisions. This paper examines some implications of the theory literature on this topic in an empirical study of the US cement industry between 1994 and 2006. Firms in this sector have the ability to deliver...

The empirical evidence currently available in the literature regarding the effects of a country's IMF program participation on its output growth is rather mixed. To shed new evidence on this issue, in this paper we specify a state-dependent panel data model accounting in particular for program...

We employ bootstrap methods (Efron (1979)) to test the effect of an important electoral reform implemented in Italy from 1993 to 2001, that moved the system for electing the Par-liament from purely proportional to plurality rule (for 75% of the seats). We do not find any effect on either the...

Most retrospective merger studies resort to the treatment effect approach, comparing the price dynamics in a treatment group and in a control group. We propose a systematic method to construct the groups, which applies to any industry with spatial competition. The method is consistent with the...

Why do for-profit firms take voluntary steps to improve the environment? Brand appeal to green consumers or investors, the ability to influence or avoid regulation, or the experience gained for future regulation, have all been suggested as possible reasons. The empirical evidence is decidedly...

The large and unsustainable deficits of the early 1980s have reemerged in recent years. This paper aims to answer two questions: What has caused the poor fiscal performance of the Philippines in recent years? Is it the result of unfortunate events, macroeconomic shocks or misdirected fiscal...

Following an earlier paper titled 'Population and Poverty: The Real Score' (UPSE Discussion Paper 0415, December 2004), the present paper was first issued in August 2008 as a contribution to the public debate on the population issue that never seemed to die in this country. The debate heated up...

The Philippine Constitution contains many strong restrictions targeted against the flow of foreign capital in specific areas of economic activities. These restrictions were the same ones that were incorporated into the nationalistic provisions of the 1935 Constitution when its framers were...