We investigate whether time-persistent cultural borders impede economic exchange across regions of the same country. To measure cultural differences we evaluate, for the first time in economics, linguistic micro-data about phonological and grammatical features of German dialects. These data are...

We provide the first empirical application of a new approach proposed by Lee (2007) to estimate peer effects in a linear-in-means model. This approach allows to control for group-level unobservables and to solve the reflection problem. We investigate peer effects in student achievement in...

This paper analyses whether individuals are influenced by the day of the week when reporting subjective well-being. By using a large panel data set and controlling for observed and unobserved individual characteristics, we find a large day-of the-week effect. Overall, we find a 'blue' Sunday...

Women start fewer businesses than men. The start-up rate among women in Germany falls short of males' start-up rate by one third. We scrutinize this gender gap using individual-level data from the KfW Start-up Monitor, a large-scale population survey on start-up activity in Germany. As a unique...

The wage curve literature consistently finds a negative relationship between regional unemployment rates and regional wages; the most widely accepted theoretical explanations interpret the unemployment rate as a measure of job competition. This paper proposes new ways of measuring job...

In our current challenging budgetary environment, school closures remain a potentially attractive choice. With a large panel of Illinois schools from 1991 to 2005, I investigate which factors contribute to school closures. Among elementary schools, declining enrolments and rural locations...

The public economic burden of shifting trends in population health remains uncertain. Sustained increases in obesity, diabetes, and other diseases could reduce life expectancy - with a concomitant decrease in the public-sector's annuity burden - but these savings may be offset by worsening...

This paper analyzes the effect of severity of disability on labour force participation by using a self-reported work limitation scale. A dynamic labour force participation model is used to capture the feedback effect of past participation on current participation. The results suggest that net of...

Structural vector-autoregressive models are potentially very useful tools for guiding both macro- and microeconomic policy. In this paper, we present a recently developed method for exploiting non-Gaussianity in the data for estimating such models, with the aim of capturing the causal structure...