Governments purchase everything from airplanes to zucchini. This paper investigates whether the technological intensity of government demand affects corporate R&Dactivities. In a quality-ladder model of endogenous growth, we show that an increase in the share of government purchases in high-tech...

We propose a model of production where technical change is both time and management induced. We define a general management index in addition to the general time index of Baltagi and Griffin (1988) and use them as arguments in the translog productionfunction. Time and management induced...

This paper estimates the causal effect of an additional year of parents' schooling on theirchildren's education, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms that were implemented inall West German states between 1946 and 1969. Although previous research indicatesthat these reforms had no effects on...

We estimate the effect of age at preschool entrance on crucial noncognitive skills in theyear before school starts. Using an instrumental variable approach and exploiting cut-offdates for the time at preschool entrance we find that children entering preschool earlierin life have better...

In theoretical trade models with variable markups and collective wage bargaining, exportexposure may reduce the exporter wage premium. We test this prediction using linkedGerman employer-employee data from 1996 to 2007. To separate the rent-sharingmechanism from assortative matching, we exploit...

Does higher income cause democracy? Accounting for the dynamic nature and highpersistence of income and democracy, we find a statistically significant positive relationbetween income and democracy for a postwar period sample of up to 150 countries. Ourresults are robust across different model...

We study the effect of preschool attendance on secondary school track choice in Germany which is a crucial outcome that largely predicts educational pathways of children. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, multivariate models show a significant positive association between years of...

We analyze the extent to which endogenous cultural amenities affect the spatial equilibriumshare of high-human-capital employees. To overcome endogeneity, we draw on a quasinaturalexperiment in German history and exploit the exogenous spatial distribution ofbaroque opera houses built as a part...