The stock of robots used in industrial production more than doubled over the last two decades. Empirically, the direction of the association between automation and (un-)employment varies across countries. Which factors explain this cross-country variation? We argue that differences in collective...

In this paper we empirically explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system in uence the international allocation of consumption risk using a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the...

We analyse the adjustment process of consumption growth after disequilibrating output shocks in a sample of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. In particular, we test the hypothesis that consumption is smoothed to a lesser degree after negative shocks, whereas...

High levels of social capital, by fostering cooperation and coordination, have direct implications for the intensity of collective action problems in a society. While it has been shown that high levels of social capital facilitate the implementation of institutional reforms we argue that the...

In this paper we analyze how the availability of credit in uences the relationship between government size as a proxy for scal stabilization policy and the amplitude of business cycle uctuations in a sample of advanced OECD countries. Interpreting relatively low loan-tovalue ratios as an...

In this paper we analyze how the availability of credit influences the relationship between government size as a proxy for fiscal stabilization policy and the amplitude of business cycle fluctuations in a sample of advanced OECD countries. Interpreting relatively low loan-tovalue ratios as an...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the importance of labor market conditions and in particular of employment protection legislation as a determinant of bilateral Foreign Direct Investment flows to seven Central and Eastern European countries. Although our results indicate...

In this paper we empirically explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system in uence the international allocation of consumption risk using a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the...

We investigate the influence of government size on the exposure of consumption growth to country-specific fluctuations in output growth using a sample of OECD countries. To the extent that governments are less constrained on international financial markets, it appears conceivable that...