Dass Menschen von sozialen Kontakten auch bei wirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten profitieren, weiß so mancher aus eigener Erfahrung. Aber können soziale Kontakte das Wachstum ganzer Regionen beflügeln? In der Studie wird argumentiert, dass die deutsche Geschichte die seltene Chance bietet, den...

We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which individuals maintain for non-economic reasons can be an important determinant of regional economic growth. We show that West German households who have social ties to East Germany in 1989 experience a persistent...

"We show that the stock market may fail to aggregate information even if it appears to be efficient and that the resulting decrease in the information content of stock prices may drastically reduce welfare. We solve a macroeconomic model in which information about fundamentals is dispersed and...