We employ a combination of school fixed effects and IV estimation to estimate the effect of class size on student performance in 18 countries. Using the random part of the class-size variation between two adjacent grades within individual schools allows us to identify causal class-size effects....

This paper analyzes the effects of different labor market institutions on inflation and output volatility. The eurozone offers an unprecedented experiment for this exercise: since 1999, no national monetary policies have been implemented that could account for volatility differences across...

We use weekly survey data on short-term and medium-term sentiment of German investors to estimate the parameters of a stochastic model of opinion dynamics. The bivariate nature of our data set also allows us to explore the interaction between the two hypothesized opinion formation processes,...

We estimate a multinomial logit model to explain the choice of transfer channel (formal services vs. informal operators or personal transfers) by 1139 pairs of migrants and recipients of remittances in Moldova in 2006. Explanatory variables include socioeconomic characteristics of the migrant...

In this paper, we explore the role of labor markets for monetary policy in the euro area in a New Keynesian model in which labor markets are characterized by search and matching frictions. We first investigate to which extent a more flexible labor market would alter the business cycle behavior...

This paper presents a theory explaining the labor market matching process through microeconomic incentives. There are heterogeneous variations in the characteristics of workers and jobs, and firms face adjustment costs in responding to these variations. Matches and separations are described...

In this paper, we present evidence on the statistical features of observed dispersion in HICP inflation rates in the Euro area. Our descriptive exercise shows that there is still a remarkable dispersion of HICP inflation rates across the member countries. We find that most of dispersion...

We use the concept of predictability as presented in Diebold and Kilian (2001) to assess how well the growth rates of various components of German GDP can be forecasted. In particular, it is analyzed how well different commonly used leading indicators can increase predictability of these time...

This paper analyzes two effects which might have an important impact on a reduction of global external imbalances. These are valuation effects on the one hand and interest rate effects on the other hand. We use a four-region model that is based on the models by Obstfeld and Rogoff (2005) and...

Daily financial market returns (as log difference in closing prices) may be quite sensitive to operations with low trading volumes and big changes in prices frequently traded at market closing times. This paper proposes a more robust estimation of market, returns by providing a new indicator...