The massive decline in international trade in 2008/09 is often attributed to the global deterioration in financial conditions after the bankruptcy of a US investment bank, Lehman Brothers. This paper examines the association between external finance and firm activity in Germany in more detail....

type="main" xml:id="twec12133-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This paper estimates the exporter premium in bank lending. We examine credit relationships in Germany, covering all loans of more than 1.5 million euro over the period from 2005 to 2010. Having controlled for a wide range of other firm and bank...</p>

Policy makers are interested in fostering economic growth and employment. Therefore, it is important to know how to boost innovation in an effective way. This paper investigates whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative in high-tech industries than economists. The main...

This paper investigates whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative in high-tech industries than economists. The main contribution to the literature is in using the type of education as main explanatory variable for innovation. To analyze this question, the KfW/ZEW...

International trade patterns at the product level are surprisingly dynamic. The majority of trade relationships exist for just a few, often only two to four, years. In this paper, I examine empirically the duration in German import trade at the 8-digit product level from 1995 to 2005. I find...

In 1999, eleven European countries formed the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); they abandoned their national currencies and adopted a new common currency, the euro. Several recent papers argue that the introduction of the euro has led (by itself) to a sizable and statistically significant...

Politicians travel extensively abroad, for various reasons. One purpose of external visits is to improve bilateral economic relations. In this paper, I examine the effect of state visits on international trade. I use a large data set covering the travel activities of the heads of state of...

Historically, dissolutions of currency unions are not unusual. I use an annual panel data set covering 245 country pairs that use a common currency (of which 128 are dissolved) from 1948 through 1997 to characterize currency union exits. I find that departures from a currency union tend to occur...