What is the impact of international migration on the wage structure? Empirically, it is difficult to find any effect at all. This essay gives a new theoretical explanation for this conspicuous absence, emphasising non-convexities in the technology of individual firms due to communication costs....

Using a simple model of social learning, we endogenize growth and distribution in a dualistic developing society. For given parameters of the learning technology, a trade-off between growth and equity results. On the other hand, more intensive social interaction between agents will raise the...

In economic reality, reactions to external shocks often come with a delay. On the other hand, agents try to anticipate future developments. Both can lead to difference-differential equations with an advancing argument. These are more difficult to handle than either difference or differential...

In recent years, a number of papers have established a new empirical regularity. Stocks of distressed firms vastly underperform those of financially healthy firms. It is not necessary to attribute the negative excess returns of distressed firms to inefficient or irrational markets. We show that...

The impact of uncertainty on firms' investment outlays is subject to an ongoing debate. Theory identifies several channels. Irreversibility, financing constraints and risk aversion make a negative relationship between uncertainty and investment likely. On the other hand, the ability of firms to...

In order to obtain a better understanding of monetary transmission, this paper assesses the importance of the interest rate and credit channels on business fixed investment in the German manufacturing sector. Our panel of financial statements contains 44,345 observations for 6,408 firms. We...

The importance of institutional settings for economic development outcomes is broadly acknowledged nowadays. This paper investigates the role of official statistics in alleviating financing constraints in emerging and developing economies, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Official...