We document that an internal locus of control can be hindering in financial market situations, where short-term outcomes are determined by chance. The reason is that internally controlled individuals may tend to (over-)react to random outcomes. Our evidence is based on an experiment in which...

In this paper, we investigate the effect of real estate prices on productive investment. We build a simple theoretical framework of firms' investment with credit rationing and real estate collateral. We show that real estate prices affect firms' borrowing capacities through two channels.An...

Competitiveness differentials are blamed for the instability of the Eurozone. Most of the analyses focus on labour costs or labour-market institutions. This paper explores an additional source of differentials in competitiveness: land and building prices. European countries, especially France,...

To improve their competitiveness the companies aim to increase the funds available to finance the necessary investments. In order to reduce wage costs company-specific deviations from industry-level wage contracts are concluded. Company-level pacts between the management and the works council...

Do the short and medium term adjustment costs associated with trade liberalization influenceschooling and child labor decisions? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schoolingand decline in...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are commonworldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. Weexploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to supportmanufacturing jobs...

This paper documents the relationship between foreign ownership and firm survival forenterprises in Germany using unique tailor-made new representative data that mergeinformation from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices, from administrative datacollected by the Tax Authorities and from...

A provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 offered tax incentives for investing in certain low-income areas in the United States called Opportunity Zones (OZs). The goal of this provision was to spur private investment in OZs in order to improve the economic well-being of their residents....

This paper empirically analyzes the impact of Chinese minimum wage regulations on the firm decision to invest in physical and human capital. We exploit the geographical and inter-temporal variations of county-level minimum wages in a panel data set of all state-owned and all above-scale...

We analyze how intermittent large expenditures on family ceremonies may affect an entrepreneur's investment decision in an informal enterprise. Our hypothesis is that the barrier between family and enterprise is thin and permeable. We test this hypothesis using a survey from Sénégal that...