In this paper we assess the information content of seven widely cited early indicators for the euro area with respect to forecasting area-wide industrial production. To this end, we use various tests that are designed to compare competing forecast models. In addition to the standard...

Lifelong learning becomes increasingly important in times of population ageing, but little is known about the returns to adult education or the effectiveness of government attempts to promote adult learning. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment with...

The crisis on international financial markets that started in 2007 has shown the potential links between the financial sector and the real economy. Exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) have declined, presumably not only because of a lack of demand, but also because of restricted access of...

Do Empires affect human values and behavior long after their demise? In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the long-gone border of the Habsburg Empire have been sharing common formal institutions for 90 years now. We exploit this geographic discontinuity in a...

This article presents evidence on the associations between family background, school characteristics and student performance in primary school in Argentina, Colombia and several comparison countries. As a general pattern, educational performance is strongly related to family background, weakly...

The paper analyzes the implications of local and global pollution when two types of abatement activities can be undertaken. One type (e.g., use of particulate matter filters) reduces solely local pollution while the other (e.g., application of fuel saving technologies) mitigates global pollution...

Across Prussian counties and towns, Protestantism led to more schooling already in 1816, before the Industrial Revolution. This supports a human capital theory of Protestant economic history and rules out a Weberian explanation of Protestant education just resulting from industrialization.

We analyze how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects employment security. Using administrative micro data for German employees allows us to follow individual workers over time. FDI intensity is measured at the sectoral level, which enables us to take into account direct as well as indirect...

We present evidence from a laboratory experiment that individuals who feel having been treated unfairly in the interaction with others are more likely to cheat in a subsequent, unrelated game. We interpret this result as showing that the violation of a social norm (fairness) by others can be...