Taking a European cross-country perspective, this paper addresses the most important issues in the nexus of population ageing and labor markets.We start from a descriptive overview of the demographic change currently shaping European societies.The subsequent section intensively discusses the...

We assume that central banks can control inflation so that inflation rates reflect the preferences of the central bank council.The hypothesis to be tested is that these preferences depend on the central bankers? educational and/or professional background. In a panel data analysis for the euro...

The cyclicality of real wages has important implications for the validity of competing business cycle theories. However, the empirical evidence on the aggregate level is inconclusive. Using a threshold vector autoregressive model for the US and Germany to condition the relationship between real...

Empirical evidence suggests that positive externalities from R&D exceed negative ones. According to conventional wisdom, this calls for R&D subsidies. This paper develops a quality-ladder growth model with overlapping generations which evaluates the positive and normative implications of R&D...

We use the PISA student-level achievement database to estimate international education production functions. Student characteristics, family backgrounds, home inputs, resources, teachers and institutions are all significantly related to math, science and reading achievement. Our models account...

Feenstra and Hanson (1997) have argued in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement that US outsourcing to Mexico leads to an increase in the skill premium in both the US and Mexico. In this paper we show on the example of Austria and Poland that with the new international division...

Based on data from the BHPS and the GSOEP, we analyse the economic performance of various ethnic groups in the UK and West Germany, as well as the effects of income redistribution on these populations. Taking the indigenous population of each country as the reference category, we find that, as a...

Studies into the Wealth of Nations have been the aim of economics since Adam Smith. However, the spectacular rise of some economies, beginning with industrializing England in the 18th century, has been of particular interest. England's rise has been as miraculous in the eyes of the observers as...