Utilising panel data for 14 East European transition economies we find support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of export variety relative to the U.S. helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels.The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...

The standard literature on working time has modelled the decisions of firms in a deterministic framework in which firms can choose between employment and overtime (given mandated standard hours). Contrary to this approach, we follow the real options approach, which allows us to investigate the...

The objective of this paper is to address the question of convergence across German districts in the first decade after German unification by drawing out and emphasising some stylised facts of regional per capita income dynamics. We achieve this by employing non-parametric techniques which focus...

We study an overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation with threshold effects using regional data for West Germany. Our basic goal is to shed light on what makes German regions grow. The paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal...

Given that the value of China´s currency has been hot topic recently, this paper explores the equilibrium levels of China´s real and nominal exchange rates. Employing a Johansen cointegration framework, we focus on the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) and permanent equilibrium...

We present a microeconometric study of the impact of financial constraints on investment decisions of 755 quoted and unquoted West German firms over the period 1989 to 1994. The underlying theoretical model is based upon rational expectations and convex adjustment costs. The panel data estimates...

The paper discusses the impact and implications of Korean unification by setting up a two-region endogenous growth model. The numerical solutions are based on the formal analytical model, and have been calibrated so that it reflects the observed features of the North and South Korean economies....

Does product variety matter for export performance? This has been suggested by the new trade theory. In the present paper, we investigate empirically whether increasing export variety has contributed to the export growth of ten East Asian countries. In the paper we calculate direct measures of...

This paper develops and estimates an open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the Hong Kong economy. The model features short-run price rigidities generated by monopolistic competition and staggered reoptimization. We devote special attention to asset prices and wealth...

The quintessence of recent natural science studies is that the 2°C target can only be achieved with massive emission reductions in the next few years. The central twist of this paper is the addition of this limited time to act into a non-perpetual real options framework analysing optimal...