This paper discusses the consequences of population aging and a fundamental pension reform - that is, a shift towards more pre-funding - for capital markets in Germany. We use a stylized closed-economy, overlapping-generations model to compare the effects of the recent German pension reform with...

Cross-country evidence on student achievement might be hampered byomitted country characteristics such as language or legal differences.This paper uses cross-state variation in Germany, whose sixteen statesshare the same language and legal system, but pursue different educationpolicies....

We discuss three methodological issues concerning forecasts of the outcome of financial distress. First, we argue that rather than using a binary model the outcome of financial distress should be modeled using a multinomial specification that distinguishes between failure, survival as going...

Durch das Konjunkturpaket und den Hochschulpakt fließen in den nächsten Jahren große Investitionsbeträge in die Bildung. Fraglich bleibt allerdings, ob es im Bildungsbereich auf mehr Finanzmittel ankommt. Reformbedarf besteht wohl eher bei den Strukturen des Bildungswesens und der Qualität...

The relative roles of factor inputs and productivity are estimated in explaining the level of economic development. For a large sample of countries, it is shown that international differences in factor inputs account for between two thirds and three quarters of international differences in...

This paper estimates the effects of family background, resources and institutions on mathematics and science performance using an international database of more than 260,000 students from 39 countries which includes extensive background information at the student, teacher, school and system...

We estimate the effect of broadband infrastructure, which enables high-speed internet, on economic growth in the panel of OECD countries in 1996-2007. Our instrumental variable model derives its non-linear first stage from a logistic diffusion model where pre-existing voice telephony and cable...