The previous literature on the determinants of individual well-being has failed to fully account for the interdependencies in well-being at the family level. This paper develops an ordered probit model with multiple random effects that allows to identify the intrafamily correlation in...

We use a rich longitudinal data set for West Germany to disentangle the wage effects for female workers around first birth. Data on daily real wages reveal a dip in women's real wages shortly before giving birth and a drop of 10 to 20 percent after finishing maternity leave and returning to the...

This paper investigates the link between health care expenditures and GDP for a sample of 21 OECD countries using recent developed panel cointegration techniques. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis accounts for the fact that health care expenditures are not only determined by income....

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the East German economy at the firm level using an unbalanced panel over the transition period 1994 to 1998. We adopt a translog stochastic frontier model to estimate technical efficiency in eastern and western Germany. The results...

In this paper we apply two different concepts (BEER and PEER) to calculate real equilibrium exchange rates for fiveEast and Central European EU accession countries. From the results bilateral nominal equilibrium exchange rates againstthe euro are obtained through an algebraic transformation....

Does exposure to international trade have a pro-competitive effect on domestic pricing? This paper attends to this question in two stages: first, by developing a simple methodology to test the above proposition by linking domestic pricing behaviour to external competition via a simple mark-up...

We investigate the impact of interest rate subsidies on the total amount of borrowing and on the average cost of borrowing using data on a panel of bank-firm relationships in Italy. Our analysis reveals that subsidies are likely to reach borrowers that would have received finance even without a...

Deregulation in the airline industry has forced full service airlines to change their strategies in order to respond to increasing challenges. In this paper, an econometric analysis of the possible determinants of economic performance of full service airlines after liberalisation has been...

This paper brings together data from 14 OECD countries on scientific publications, patents and production specialisation to explore the relationship between economic and production specialisation for 17 manufacturing sectors. Since Marx, there has been a fundamental debate in economics about the...

The present study, using the Cox proportional hazard model, suggests a firm faces a significantly higher risk of takeover if its cost performance lags behind its industry benchmark. The effects of variables capturing cost inefficiency on the risk of takeover appear to be remarkably stable over...