Football fans worldwide anticipate the 2018 FIFAWorld Cup that will take place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018. 32 of the best teams from 5 confederations compete to determine the new World Champion. Using a consensus model based on quoted odds from 26 bookmakers and betting exchanges a...

For the estimation of structural gravity models using PPML with countrypair, exportertime and importer-time effects it proves useful to exploit the equilibrium restrictions imposed by the system of multilateral resistances. This yields an iterative projection based PPML estimator that is...

Low visibility conditions enforce special procedures that reduce the operational flight capacity at airports. Accurate and probabilistic forecasts of these capacity-reducing lowvisibility procedure (lvp) states help the air traffic management to optimize flight planning and regulation. In this...

We study the revision of survey expectations in response to macroeconomic shocks, which we identify in vector autoregressive models with sign restrictions. We find that survey respondents distinguish between movements along the Phillips curve and shifts of the Phillips curve, depending on the...

We use survey data to study how consumers assess the macroeconomic effects of structural oil market shocks on the U.S. economy using vector autoregressive models. To structurally decompose oil price changes, we impose sign restrictions on impulse responses. We find that the survey respondents'...

A method to predict lightning by postprocessing numerical weather prediction (NWP) output is developed for the region of the European Eastern Alps. Cloud-to-ground-flashes - detected by the ground-based ALDIS network - are counted on the 18x18 km2 grid of the 51-member NWP ensemble of the...

Does tax evasion run in the family? To answer this question, we study the case of the commuter tax allowance in Austria. This allowance is designed as a step function of the distance between the residence and the workplace, creating sharp discontinuities at each bracket threshold. The distance...

This paper dissects distributional preferences with group identity in a modified dictator game. I estimate individual-level utility functions with two parameters that govern the trade-offs between equity and efficiency and giving to self and to other. Subjects put on average less weight on...

Fostering the emergence of a "European identity" was one of the declared goals of the euro adoption. Now, years after the physical introduction of the common currency, we investigate whether there has been an effect on a shared European identity. We use two different datasets in order to assess...

Social insurance programs typically comprise sick-leave insurance. An important policy parameter is how the costs of lost productivity due to sick leave are shared between workers, firms, and the social security system. We show that this sharing rule affects not only absence behavior but also...