We examine the diffusion of steam technology across British counties during the eighteenth century. First, we provide new estimates for the regional variations in the timing, pace and extent of usage of steam engines. Our main data source is an updated version of the list of steam engines...

Die Wirtschaft der Eurozone ist stark auf forschungsintensive Industrien spezialisiert. In den einzelnen Euroländern ist die Bedeutung dieser Branchen sehr unterschiedlich, besonders groß ist sie in Deutschland. Anders als in der aktuellen Diskussion zum Teil unterstellt, hat die Einführung...

Viele kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) können Forschung und Entwicklung (FuE) nicht allein aus Eigenmitteln finanzieren. Die Fremdfinanzierung risikoreicher FuE-Projekte mit Krediten ist ihnen aber auch nur begrenzt möglich. Die Förderprogramme des Bundes, der Länder und der EU sind...

Die Innovationspolitik des Bundes und der Länder bietet dem Mittelstand ein breites Spektrum an Programmen zur Stärkung von Forschung und Entwicklung der kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen und ist besonders auf den Wissenstransfer ausgerichtet. In den letzten Jahren wurden die Programme...

Verdoorn's law refers to a statistical relationship between the long-run growth rate of labour productivity and the growth rate of output, usually for the manufacturing sector. Since the sixties this relationship has been examined in a large number of studies using a wide variety of data sets...

This paper develops and tests a mechanism by which job security affects the age-composition of employment. This mechanism is based on the relative costs of dismissing young versus older workers resulting from job security provisions that are related to tenure. Using 39 consecutive annual...

Spain and Ireland might seem at first to feature very different labour markets, which go from very tight to very flexible labour conditions. Our analysis, however, goes beyond this simplistic argument and brings to light some important similarities. For this purpose, we estimate a dynamic...

The way age-specific unemployment rates fluctuate over the business cycle differs significantly across countries. This paper examines the effect of labor-market institutions on the fluctuations of age-specific unemployment rates based on panel data of 18 OECD countries between 1971 and 2008....

While there is a fairly broad consensus regarding the potential adverse effects of generous unemployment benefit insurance on steady-state employment, the short-term effects of benefit reforms are not well-established. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating impulse responses to...

The possible short-run trade-off between the inflation (gap) and the output (gap) remains a critical policy issue for any emerging economy; particularly when an implicit or an explicit inflation targeting monetary policy is considered. The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) has recently set up...