Use of microdata is severely hampered in many areas of research. This is in particular true for data from statistical offices. One way to circumvent this problem is to anonymize the data such that both confidentiality is guaranteed and informational content of the data is not to much distorted...

Die statistische Analyse mittels Fernrechnen (Remote Access bzw. Remote Execution) bietet die Möglichkeit, die Mikrodaten in originaler Form zu verwenden. Allerdings ist dabei zu beachten, daß bestimmte statistische Prozeduren, etwa die Verwendung bestimmter Schein-Variablen (dummy variables,...

Economists interested in location choices usually focus their attention on investments abroad. This neglects the fact that multinational enterprises continue to invest domestically while undertaking foreign expansion. This paper compares investments at home and abroad. Our firm-level dataset...

This paper estimates a disequilibrium model of credit supply and demand to evaluate the relative role of these factors in the slowdown of credit flows in the Jordanian economy in the wake of the global financial crisis. The empirical analysis suggests that the credit stagnation is mainly driven...

In recent years, many countries have adopted Fiscal Responsibility Laws to strengthen fiscal institutions and promote fiscal discipline in a credible, predictable and transparent manner. Still, results on the effectiveness of these laws remain tentative. In this paper, we test empirically...

In this paper we contribute to the empirical literature on growth in the MENA region by attempting to quantify the impact of the various constraints faced by local businesses highlighted by the World Bank’s Business Enterprise surveys. To the best of our knowledge this dataset has not been...

In this paper we estimate gravity models to see whether trade volumes of countries in the MENA region are significantly lower than what would be expected given their economic, cultural and geographical characteristics. Our empirical results show that the variables used in standard gravity models...

How do firm-specific actions-in particular, innovation-affect firm productivity? And what is the role of the financial sector in facilitating higher productivity? Using a rich firm-level dataset, we find that innovation is crucial for firm performance as it directly and measurably increases...