We explore how participation in social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter affects the most economically relevant aspect of social capital, trust. We use measures of trust in strangers (or social trust), trust in neighbours and trust in the police. We address endogeneity in the...

During the last decades, wage inequality in Germany has considerably increased both within and across regions. Building on concepts of the task-based approach, this paper studies whether and to what extent these developments are driven by technological change. We present novel evidence that...

This paper analyzes the polarization of employment and wages in Germany between 1979 and 2006, focusing on the role of technological progress. We exploit spatial variation in the exposure to technological progress which arises due to initial regional specialization in routine task-intensive...

During the last years the worldwide legal framework has stimulated the biofuel development, causing their production and use to be exhaustively studied. Biodiesel has been mostly produced in European countries, but the agronomic potential of the Latin-American countries has led the effort toward...

We estimate the determinants of capital intensity in Japan and the US, characterized by striking different paths. We augment an otherwise standard Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) model with demand-side considerations, which we find especially relevant in the US. In this augmented...

Policies toward the diffusion of electric vehicles received a lot of attention in the latest years in many developed countries. Yet the real costs and benefits for society as a whole of this technology have received limited attention from economists. In this context, the present paper proposes a...

This study contributes to existing literature on firms’ innovative activity examining the influence of both internal firms’ physical and R&D capital, and external national and international knowledge spillovers. The paper presents a cross national analysis of United States, Japan and Europe...

The constitutional incorporation of international human-rights law is often seen as one of the most powerful ways in which treaty norms can be enforced at the local level. This paper examines empirically if and how human-rights treaties alter rights commitments in national constitutions....

[Part I] The leading part of this volume focuses on the role of the state in capitalist society, beginning by showing the welfare state as an historical product of the class structure of English agrarian capitalism. The second chapter indicates how, in European colonies such as in Africa,...