The provision of credit has been shown to be eminent for macroeconomic activity.Recent research highlighted that optimism may play a role in the provision of credit through leverage cycles. A decomposition of corporate bond spreads allows the modelling of a propensity-to-lend through an excess...

We study the evolution of the response of scal policy to monetary policy shocks in the EMU in the light of two important events: the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and the introduction of the EMU in 1999. Based on impulse responses from a panel VAR, we nd that scal and monetary policy...

The standard search model of unemployment predicts, under plausible assumptions about household preferences, that disembodied technological progress leads to higher unemployment. This prediction is at odds with the experience of industrialized countries in the 1970s. This paper shows that...

In this paper we analyze transitions in the stock markets of the US, the UK, and Germany. For all this markets we find that while the markets were focused on stocks from the IT and technology sector around the year 2000, this focus has vanished and the markets have mostly moved towards a focus...

We compare seven established risk elicitation methods and investigate how they explain an extensive set of risky behavior from a large household survey. We find overall positive correlation between items and low explanatory power in terms of behavior. Using an average of seven risk elicitation...

Solar radiation management (SRM) could quickly offset global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Because SRM would have global side effects, it raises not only technological but also political and social concerns. Therefore, SRM research should be accompanied by a global...

This study estimates and tests the endogeneity of the natural rate of growth using the balance-of-payments consistent rate of growth (BPCRG) instead of the actual rate of growth. Our approach is also theoretically compatible with the one proposed by Thirlwall (2001). Following this idea, we...

The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and the distribution of rent are central issues in R&D-based growth models with the return to innovation serving as the engine of growth. In this paper the authors consider the strength of the intellectual property rights and franchise...

The purpose of this note is to introduce the technique and main findings of meta-analysis to the reader, who is unfamiliar with the field and has the usual objections. A meta-analysis is a quantitative survey of a literature reporting estimates of the same parameter. The funnel showing the...

This paper analyzes the horizontal productivity effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) from industrialized and developing countries in 10 sub-Saharan African countries. We establish a unique data set by combining data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys that allow us to distinguish...