This paper presents new composite leading indicators for the two largest of the EU accession countries, Poland and Hungary. Using linear and non-linear dynamic factor models we find for both countries that a parsimonious specification, which combines national business cycle indicators,series...

This paper presents a duopoly model of e-business technology adoption. A leader and a follower benefit from a new e-business technology with uncertain quality depending on its innovation and adoption cost and both firms’ adoption timing. When innovation and adoption require large set-up costs,...

Even though some countries track students into differing-ability schools by age 10, others keep their entire secondary-school system comprehensive. To estimate the effects of such institutional differences in the face of country heterogeneity, we employ an international...

We introduce skill groups and different production technologies into the Burdett-Mortensen model of on the job search. Supermodularity of the different skill groups in the production process leads to a positive intra-firm wage correlation between skill groups. Increasing returns to scale allow...

Business tendency surveys are a commonly accepted instrument for the assessment ofthe current business cycle course. Most of these surveys rely on qualitative questionsabout the current situation of the firms and about heir expectations for the next months. This paper analyzes whether...

A detailed analysis of the German productivity development is indispensable for understanding, why Europe is lagging behind the US growth since the mid 1990s. In this paper a new and unique database is used to analyze the sources of German productivity growth since 1970. It is shown that...

Given the relatively low computational effort involved, vector autoregressive (VAR)models are frequently used for macroeconomic forecasting purposes. However, the usuallylimited number of observations obliges the researcher to focus on a relatively smallset of key variables, possibly discarding...

Using data on German and Swedish multinational enterprises (MNEs), this paper analyzes determinants ofinternational location choice and the degree of substitutability of labor across locations. Countries with highly skilled labor forces strongly attract German but not necessarily Swedish MNEs....

The Ifo Institute for Economic Research has been conducting regular business surveyssince its foundation in 1949. The most well-known of Ifo’s surveys is the Ifo BusinessSurvey (ifo Konjunkturtest). The micro data of the Ifo Business Survey are accessible toexternal researchers on-site at Ifo...

The euro area has experienced a sustained decline in labour productivity growth sincethe 1980s. In the economic literature this phenomenon is commonly explained by adecline in capital deepening and lower total factor productivity (TFP) growth. However,the decline in labour productivity growth...