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Leading Indicators of German Business Cycles: An Assessment of Properties

Tax Liability-Side Equivalence in Experimental Posted-Offer Markets

In theory, the incidence of a tax should be independent of the side of the market on which it is levied. This principle of liability-side equivalence underlies virtually all theories of tax incidence. Policy discussions, however, tend to place great emphasis on the legal division of tax payments. We use computerized experimental posted-offer markets to test liability-side equivalence. We find that ...

Maintenance of an Innovation in Long-Term Panel Studies: The Case of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP)

Portuguese Migrants in the German Labor Market: Selection and Performance

The labor market performance of Portuguese workers in Germany is analyzed in this article. While previous work has compared wages and characteristics of migrants to natives only, this study also matches the data set with an equivalent survey from the sending country. The findings show that Portuguese migrants as a whole are negatively selected, with the exception of blue-collar workers, the largest ...

Was kann die Aktive Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland aus der Evaluationsforschung in anderen europäischen Ländern lernen?

Most evaluation studies for Germany's active labor market policy (ALMP) indicate that subsidized employment programs in the public sector (public works programs, "Arbeitsbeschaffungsmaßnahmen") and publicly funded training programs have, on average, no or even negative effects on individual re-employment probabilities. This paper provides possible explanations for the ineffectiveness of these programs, ...

Efficient Infrastructure Supply for Economic Development in Transition Countries: The Case of Ukraine

Infrastructure restructuring is one of the major elements of structural reforms in transition economies because of its expected large economic and social impact. This article aims to assess the role of infrastructure policy in economic development in transition countries in general and Ukraine in particular. We test the relationship between infrastructure policy and economic growth, though this test ...

Vertical Integration and Market Foreclosure with Convex Downstream Costs

In a framework with an upstream monopoly and a downstream duopoly, we analyze the impact of convex costs at the downstream level. In contrast to the case of constant marginal costs, vertical integration does not imply complete market foreclosure. While the nonintegrated downstream firm receives a strictly positive amount of the intermediate good, the downstream allocation is inefficient. However, a ...

Export Intermediation: An Empirical Test of Peng and Ilinitch

This paper provides empirical evidence from France on the role of export intermediary firms. Using data from 20,000 French firms, this paper tests two of the five transaction cost-based propositions on the role of export intermediaries by Peng and Ilinitch (1998). While the empirical evidence only partially supports their first proposition on distance and familiarity, their second proposition on product ...

Coordination Failure with Multiple-Source Lending: The Cost of Protection against a Powerful Lender

We analyze how a firm might protect quasirents in an environment of imperfect capital markets, where switching lenders is costly to the borrower, and contracts are incomplete. As switching costs make the firm vulnerable to ex post exploitation, it may want to diversify lending. Multiple-source lending, however, suffers from coordination failure. An uncoordinated withdrawal of funds will force a financially ...

Unemployment and Productivity Growth: An Empirical Analysis within an Augmented Solow Model

Does a country's level of unemployment have an impact on the long-run growth rate? Incorporating unemployment into a generalised Solow-type growth model yields some answers. In the traditional Solow model, unemployment has no long-run influence on the growth rate and the level of productivity. The long-run level of productivity is reduced if higher unemployment leads to less formal education or to ...