The Knappschaft underlies Bismarck’s sickness and accident insurance legislation (1883 and 1884), which in turn forms the basis of the German social-insurance system today and, indirectly, many social-insurance systems around the world. The Knappschaften were formed in the medieval period to...

This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the eff ects of cross-border M&As on investing fi rms’ domestic performance in the U.K. and France. We build a new fi rm-level dataset that combines a global M&A database with balance sheet data for the years 2000–2007. Combining matching techniques...

This paper proposes a variant of the classical HAUSMAN specifi cation test commonly employed to decide whether the estimation of a random-eff ects model is a viable alternative to estimating fi xed eff ects. Whereas the classical test probes the equality of fi xed- and random eff ects, the...

Despite similar levels of per capita income, education, and technology the development of labour shares in OECD countries has displayed diff erent patterns since 1960. The paper examines the role of demography in this regard. Employing an overlapping generations model we fi rst examine the...

In 2003 the Government of Ghana established a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to improve health care access for Ghanaians and eventually replace the cashand- carry system. This study evaluates the NHIS to determine whether it is fulfi lling its purpose in the context of the Millennium...

Government agencies and other national and international institutions are asked to perform forecasts over the medium term. In particular, the EU Stability and Growth Pact contains the obligation to formulate stability programmes over four years, covering a general economic outlook as well as the...

Over the last years, public smoking bans have been introduced in most European countries. Unlike elsewhere, in Germany such bans were introduced at state level at diff erent points in time, which provides important intra-country regional variation that can be exploited to identify the eff ects...

The interdependence of labor market conditions and the demand for health care has been addressed by several theoretical and empirical analyses. We contribute to the debate by empirically examining the eff ect of a decrease in self-perceived job security on health care utilization. That is,...

Government agencies and other national and international institutions are asked to perform foThis paper introduces a two-stage union-oligopoly-council model of wage and employment determination wherein at the fi rst stage wage is negotiated through collective bargaining and at the second stage...