Analyses of credit spreads, i. e. the difference between the returns on corporate loans and on no-risk investments for periods equivalent in length, can provide useful information to both business managers and to external observers. In this article, fundamental determinants of such credit...

This paper deals with the effects of labour market institutions on unemployment in a panel of 19 OECD countries for the period 1960–2000. In contrast to many other studies, we use long time series and analyse cyclically adjusted trend values of the unemployment rate. Our novel contribution is...

Fiscal positions of African countries have improved significantly during the past decade. Higher economic growth, better terms of trade, improved donor support notably through debt relief and better control of expenditure contributed to this improvement. But at the same time government revenue...

"This paper analyses the effects of education signals for Ethnic Germans and Germans without a migration background ('Native Germans'). We base our analysis on a sorting model with productivity enhancing effects of education. We compare whether the signalling value differs between the migrants...

This article presents a micro data approach to the identification of credit crunches. Using a survey among German firms which regularly queries the firms' assessment of the current willingness of banks to extend credit, we estimate the probability of a restrictive loan supply policy by time...

This paper deals with the effects of labour market institutions on unemployment in a panel of 19 OECD countries for the period 1960-2000. In contrast to many other studies, we use long time series and analyse cyclically adjusted trend values of the unemployment rate. Our novel contribution is...

The concept of the ’employment threshold’ plays an important role in the public discussion of unemployment. The employment threshold is defined as that growth rate of output necessary to keep employment constant despite the continuous rise in productivity. It is related to the Okun...

Angesichts des demografischen Wandels und eines stetigen Strukturwandels hin zu einer Wissens- und Informationsgesellschaft wird die Nachfrage nach gut ausgebildeten Akademikern in Deutschland deutlich zunehmen. Dies gilt insbesondere für die ingenieurswissenschaftlichen Studiengänge, die vor...

This paper estimates the effect of innovation on employment at the firm level. Our uniquely long innovation panel data set of German manufacturing firms covers more than 20 years and allows us to use various innovation measures. We can distinguish between product and process innovations as well...

This paper deals with the effects of labour market institutions on labour market performance. We analyse as an indicator for the labour intensity of output growth the employment threshold (the minimum growth rate of output necessary to keep employment constant). We show for a sample of 17 OECD...