This thesis consists of a summary and four self-contained papers. <p> Paper [I] Following the 1987 report by The World Commission on Environment and Development, the genuine saving has come to play a key role in the context of sustainable development, and the World Bank regularly publishes numbers...</p>

Given a sample from a fully specified parametric model, let Z_<em>n</em> be a given finite-dimensional statistic - for example, an initial estimator or a set of sample moments. We propose to (re-)estimate the parameters of the model by maximizing the likelihood of Z_<em>n</em>. We call this the maximum indirect...

Summary Despite near stagnation in the euro area and the negative impact of the Ukraine crisis, in most of the NMS economies and some of the Western Balkan countries growth prospects are viewed as positive. While the NMS economies will preserve their positive growth differential vis-à-vis the...

This paper shows that the added worker effect (AWE) plays an important role in coping against aggregate shocks, even in cases where the discouragement effect prevails at a macroeconomic scale. Using an Argentine panel dataset between 2000-2002, we instrument the endogenous variation in the labor...

This paper studies the relationship between economic growth (GDP) and energy consumption (EC) by using panel data for 95 countries from 1971 to 2008. The World Bank classification helps us to divide our 95 countries into four income groups of countries: low income group, lower-middle income...

This paper uses panel cointegration techniques to examine the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption, economic growth and CO2 emissions for a group of 12 MENA countries covering the annual period 1975-2008. The Granger-causality results indicate that there is no causal...

We use individual level data from eight waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey during 1991–2011 to investigate age profiles of health expenditure for rural and urban residents in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Employing a two-part model, we find that health expenditure of rural...

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

We empirically analyze the language proficiency of migrants in the Netherlands. Traditionally, the emphasis in studying language proficiency and economic outcomes has been on the relation between earnings and indicators for language proficiency, motivated by the human capital theory. Here we...

We determine the magnitude and nature of systematic default risk using 1971{2009) default data from Moody's. We disentangle systematic risk factors due to business cycle effects, common default dynamics (frailty), and industry-specific dynamics (including contagion). To quantify the contribution...