The growth effects of international financial liberalization and integration are investigated using the methodology and data developed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). The main result is that industries highly dependent on external financing do not experience higher growth in value added in...

A model is considered in which optimal search intensity is a result of a trade off between short run losses due to higher search costs (more interviews, commuting...) and long-run gains due to a higher chance of finding a job. We show that this optimal search intensity is higher in areas...

Multinational firms pay relatively high wages. Less is known about the wage structure within multinational and non-multinational firms. We examine the impact of acquisitions on wage dispersion in Sweden using a large matched employer-employee data set. Foreign acquisitions of Swedish firms...

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the size and the quality of social networks on the probability to find a job. We first develop a theoretical model in which individuals are embedded within a network of social relationships. Workers can obtain information about jobs via employed...

Does the average level of sickness absence in a neighborhood affect individual sickness absence through social interaction on the neighborhood level? To answer this question, we consider evidence of local benefit-dependency cultures. Well-known methodological problems in this type of analysis...

We investigate monetary-policy autonomy under different exchange-rate regimes in small, open European economies during the 1980s and 1990s. We find no systematic link between ex post monetary-policy autonomy and exchange rate regimes. This result is enforced for countries/periods with...

An important issue in the debate on voucher systems and school choice is what effects competition from independent schools will have on public schools. Sweden has made a radical reform of its system for financing schools. Independent and public schools operate on close to equal terms under a...

Recent theoretical models suggest that the costs governments face when defaulting on their domestic and external debt may differ considerably. This paper examines if this proposed cost difference is reflected in sovereign risk spreads across domestic and foreign markets. Specifically, I analyze...

The goal of this paper is twofold: First, to develop an estimable model of legislative politics in the US Congress, second, to provide a greater understanding of the objectives behind the New Deal. In the theoretical model, the distribution of federal funds across regions of the country is the...

In a recent paper, García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez (2005) apply the generalized IV model of Hausman and Taylor to estimate education returns of wage earners and the self-employed in Portugal and in Spain. Our examination reveals several problems which relate to the validity and documentation...