The paper is devoted to an econometric analysis of learning foreign languages in all parts of the world. Our sample covers 193 countries and 13 important languages. Four factors significantly explain learning, two of which affect the broad decision to learn, while two concern as well the choice...

Somatic distance, or differences in physical appearance, proves to be extremely important in the gravity model of bilateral trade in conformity with results in other areas of economics and outside of it in the social sciences. This is also true quite independently of survey evidence about...

Monetäre Disziplin – Deutschland und das Europäische Währungssystem Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Hypothese, daß alle Mitgliedsländer des Europäischen Währungssystems (EWS) außer Deutschland Nutzen aus diesem System ziehen, weil es ihnen monetäre Disziplin auferlegt. Die Hypothese...

In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein-Horioka puzzle. Using a gravity framework in an intertemporal context, we provide strong support for the hypothesis and we reconcile our results with...

This article questions Milton Friedman’s methodological position in a famous essay dating to 1948 where he questions the validity of tests of the assumptions of economic theory. Valid tests, he maintains, by and large, concern the empirical implications of hypotheses derived from the theory....

This article attempts to show that Pigou does not rely on the "wealth effect" in his attack on the doctrine of "unemployment equilibrium" with flexible money wages (a doctrine which, incidentally, he never considers clearly Keynesian). Instead, he depends on a form of "substitution effect,"...

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) is generally believed to have rejected the classical theory of comparative costs. He supposedly maintained, contrary to the classical view, that transportation costs instead of international factor immobilities were the primary basis for a special theory of...

This paper questions the popular anthropological assumption that all purpose money rules in the West today. Contrary to the followers of Karl Polanyi in anthropology, modern as well as primitive money is special purpose money. It is argued further that serious difficulties and confusions arise...