Foreign direct investment (FDI) is generally considered a driving factor to economic growth. Nevertheless, empirical evidence is rather mixed, reporting a positive, neutral, or even negative relationship of FDI with growth. Our investigation concentrates on the impact of FDI inflows on growth...

This report looks at employer - provided training in Europe. We start with a brief outline of the economic theory of training. We then look at the recent facts, by combining data from two employer surveys, the European Investment Bank's Investment Survey (EIBIS) and Eurostat's Continuous...

Seit die EZB den Einlagezins in den negativen Bereich gesenkt hat, gehen auch vermehrt Geschaftsbanken dazu uber, diesen negativen Zins an ihre Kunden weiterzugeben. In diesem Beitrag wird zunachst geklart, unter welchen Umstanden Sichteinlagen und Uberschussliquiditat entstehen und welche Rolle...

The U.S. economy has experienced a significant drop in the fraction of the population employed in middle wage, "routine task-intensive" occupations. Applying machine learning techniques, we identify characteristics of those who used to be employed in such occupations and show they are now less...

Poverty involves both low income levels and high income uncertainty. Do both these dimensions of being poor capture attention in ways that distort decision-making and trap people in poverty? We examine these issues using real-life shocks faced by farmers in Brazil: random payday variation...

Under rotation-equivariant decision theory, sample covariance matrix eigenvalues can be optimally shrunk by recombining sample eigenvectors with a (potentially nonlinear) function of the unobservable population covariance matrix. The optimal shape of this function reflects the loss/risk that is...

Many econometric and data-science applications require a reliable estimate of the covariance matrix, such as Markowitz portfolio selection. When the number of variables is of the same magnitude as the number of observations, this constitutes a difficult estimation problem; the sample covariance...

Chancenungleichheit in Deutschland manifest sich beim Übergang von der Grundschule zu den weiterführenden Schulformen. Viele Projekte im Rahmen des Reformprogramms kommunale Bildungslandschaften bzw. Bildungsregionen setzen hier an. Ein Übergangsmanagement durch die kommunale Schulverwaltung...