Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real exchange rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange rate...

This paper provides a two-part empirical analysis on how actuarial reduction rates for early retirement affect current pension payments in Germany and to what extent the existence and the magnitude of these reduction rates influence people s retirement planning. First, by evaluating a large...

This paper studies the causal effects of graduating from university with an honors degree on subsequent labor market outcomes. While a rich body of literature has focused on estimating returns to human capital, few studies have analyzed returns at the very top of the education distribution. We...

High public debt combined with low capacities of the state to raise taxes and to support markets can put even developed countries into turmoil. However, the existing political economy literature of state capacity, pioneered by Besley and Persson (2009), does not investigate the interaction of...

We re-examin the notion of identifying macroeconomic effects using the narrative approach taking as an application the estimation of tax multipliers. We point out to a test for the checking the adequacy of regressing the narrative measure directly on the outcome variable. This test...

This paper estimates the effects of monetary policy on the UK economy based on a new, extensive real-time forecast data set. Employing the Romer Romer identification approach we first construct a new measure of monetary policy innovations for the UK economy. We find that a one percentage point...

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct...

This paper looks at the e ffect of cultural barriers on the skill selection of international migration. The data covers bilateral migration stocks by skill level in 2000 from about 99 sending countries to the main 15 destination countries. We use genetic distance as a proxy for cultural distance...

With the Federal Funds rate approaching the zero lower bound, the U.S. Federal Reserve adopted a range of unconventional monetary policy measures known as Quantitative Easing (QE). Quantifying the impact QE has on the real economy, however, is not straightforward as standard tools such as VAR...

Lack of transmission capacity hampers the efficient integration of the European electricity market, and thereby precludes reaping the full benefits of competition. We investigate to what extent the expansion of the transmission grid promotes competition, efficiency, and welfare. This work...