This chapter describes the main impact evaluation methods, both experimental and quasi-experimental, and the statistical model underlying them. Some of the most important methodological advances to have recently been put forward in this field of research are presented. We focus not only on the...

Datasets that are terabytes in size are increasingly common, but computer bottlenecks often frustrate a complete analysis of the data. While more data are better than less, diminishing returns suggest that we may not need terabytes of data to estimate a parameter or test a hypothesis. But which...

We provide a concise introduction to a household-panel data infrastructure that provides the international research community with longitudinal data of private households in Germany since 1984: the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We demonstrate the comparative strength of the SOEP data in...

A bi-directional relationship between FDI and economic reforms in ten Central European countries is tested, along with the role of the EU in breaking a potential vicious circle of insecurity, little investment, slow reforms, low prospects of EU membership and hence high insecurity. Using panel...

In this papaer, we put DSGE forecasts in competition with factor forecasts. We focus on these two models since they represent nicely the two opposing forecasting philosophies. The DSGE model on the one hand has a strong theoretical economic background; the factor model on the other hand is mainly...

A bi-directional relationship between FDI and economic reforms in ten Central European countries is tested, along with the role of the EU in breaking a potential vicious circle of insecurity, little investment, slow reforms, low prospects of EU membership and hence high insecurity. Using panel...

In this paper we analyze the trend of the gender gap between wives and husbands for Mediterranean countries with a strong family tradition, using data from the European Household Panel (ECHP) of 2001 and the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) of 2006. In general, wives and...

The IAB employment subsample is now available for researchers in a third, anonymised version. Following the so-called basic file and the regional file from the IAB employment subsample, which encompassed the years 1975 to 1990, the actualized version of the basic file covers now the years 1975...

Cost plays a prominent decision making role in the life of an individual and organisation because it is a central focus of daily financial activities. In any financial engagement, usually for a reward, the costs that are incidental to the engagement could be broadly analysed into material,...

Classical regression analysis uses partial coefficients to measure the influences of some variables (regressors) on another variable (regressand). However, a descriptive point of view shows that these coefficients are very bad measures of influence. Their interpretation as an average change of...