Foreign activities of MNEs have important effects on home economies. The debate is ambiguous: concerns that foreign investments deplete domestic economies are often coupled with the pride for doing good business in foreign countries. This Paper addresses this question by defining the appropriate...

This paper analyzes the effects of financial liberalization on growth and volatility at the industry level in a large sample of countries. We estimate the impact of liberalization on production, employment, firm entry, capital accumulation, and productivity, using both de facto and de jure...

Many Western economies have reformed their welfare systems with the aim of activating welfare recipients by increasing welfare-to-work programmes and job search enforcement. We evaluate the three most important German welfare-to-work programmes implemented after a major reform in January 2005...

This paper investigates whether government support can act to increase exporting activity. We use a uniquely rich data set on Irish manufacturing plants and employ an empirical strategy that combines a non-parametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal...

Transferring low tech manufacturing jobs to cheap labour countries is often seen by part of the general public and policy makers as a step into the de-industrialisation of the European economies. However, several recent contributions have shown that the effects on home economies are rarely...

Japan experienced a deep and prolonged banking crisis in the 1990s. In this Paper we attempt to identify the characteristics of companies which have the most to lose from the banks’ malaise. Using stock price data, we calculate abnormal returns of non-financial companies around significant...

Do exchange rates react to exogenous capital movements? We explore this issue based on the redefinition of the MSCI international equity indices announced on 10 December 2000 and implemented in two steps on 30 November 2001 and 31 May 2002. The index changes implied major changes in the...

There is a substantial theoretical literature on the potential effects of loyalty contracts, but a relative paucity of empirical work. This Paper employs the event study methodology to examine the effect of exclusionary contracts on firm performance in the ocean shipping industry. Shipping...

This Paper looks at the value generated to shareholders by the announcement of mergers and acquisitions involving firms in the European Union over the period 1998-2000. Cumulative abnormal shareholder returns due to the announcement of a merger reflect a revision of the expected value resulting...

Political economists interested in discerning the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections. We sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in...