This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of nonfinancial firms' leverage and macroeconomic uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts that as macroeconomic un-certainty increases the firm will decrease its optimal level of...

In the year 2000, the German government passed the most ambitious tax reform in post-war German history aiming at a significant tax relief for households. One central aim of this tax reform was to improve work incentives and, thereby, foster employment. In this paper, I estimate an intertemporal...

This paper investigates Turkey's sectoral trade flows to the EU based on panel data from the period 1988 to 2002. Turkey's sixteen most important export sectors are analysed. Emphasis is placed on the role of price competition, EU protection, and transport costs in the export trade between...

According to the economic theory of crime, a rise in expected punishment (the product of probability and severity of punishment) results in a reduction of crime due to deterrence. What appears to be a simple and straightforward hypotheses turns out to be a demanding task for empirical...

After the collapse in the early years of transition, saving rates in many EU-accession countries have recovered and remained stable during recent years. This may indicate that the transformation process has come to an end with regard to savings. Is saving behaviour in EU-accession countries now...

We link life-satisfaction data to inequality of the pre- and post-government income distribution at the regional level, to estimate the degree of inequality aversion. Three different inequality measures are used. In addition, we investigate whether a reduction in inequality by the state...

In this paper I develop an intertemporal discrete choice model of labor supply. The framework incorporates the nonlinearities in the household budget set and accounts for state dependence in labor supply. Based on panel data for Germany (SOEP), I estimate this model using a dynamic conditional...