Economic debate about the consequences of immigration in Germany has largely focused on the wage effects for natives at an aggregate level. Especially the role of imperfect substitutability of migrants and natives gained importance. A new micro oriented approach is to focus on the firm level by...

The paper argues that national regulators can improve the stability of the domestic banking sector via two substitutable policy instruments; minimum capital requirements and effort spend on domestic supervision. Both tools increase the soundness of a national banking system, but they imply...

The study develops two new real wages series for Germany c. 1500-1850 and analyzes their relationship with population size. From 1690 data density allows the estimation of a structural time series model of this relationship. The major results are the following: First, there was a strong negative...

Models built on the classical quality-quantity trade-off predict an increase in child quality and a decrease in child quantity in poor developing countries when parental wealth and educational levels increase. This paper tests this prediction empirically in a cross-sectional framework with data...

We study risk-aversion and prudence in medical treatment decisions. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate the frequency and intensity of second- and third-order risk preferences, as well as the effect of the medical decision context. Risk preferences are assessed through treatment...

This paper demonstrates why an increased quantity of funding as claimed by big health lenders is not effective to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). An alternative funding mechanism linking the disbursement of matching grants with a minimum provision level is suggested. In order to...

In this paper we introduce a cointegrated VAR modelling approach for two-country macro dynamics. In order to tackle the curse of dimensionality resulting from the number of variables in multi-country models, we investigate the applicability of the approach by Aoki (1981) frequently used in...

Profit taxes are widely acknowledged to influence the location of firms' headquarters. This paper sheds light on the role of aspects of labor taxation for the international location of headquarters. We construct a unique data set of effective labor taxes in 120 countries and use data on the...

This paper explicitly models strategic interaction between two independent national fiscal authorities and a single central bank in a simple New Keynesian model of a monetary union. Monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Coordination of fiscal policies...

Empirical studies show that job search behavior depends on the financial situation of the unemployed. Starting from this observation, we ask how unemployment insurance policy should take the individual financial situation into account. We use a quantitative model with a realistically calibrated...