Im Kampf gegen die Covid-19-Pandmie haben Regierungen und staatliche Stellen weltweit mit einer Vielzahl von Gesetzen, Verordnungen und alternativen Maßnahmen reagiert. Um diese besser zu verstehen, werden im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts CoronaNet Daten über diese staatlichen Maßnahmen...

Governments around the world have taken a significant number and variety of actions in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. To understand this flood of government actions, policymakers and researchers need access not only to high-quality, up-to-date data on government responses, but also tools to...

Bank lending has been a major concern since the financial crisis. We study the effect of a firm’s own credit market experience on its perceived bank lending policy using the Austrian Business Climate Survey between 2011 and 2014 and. Our results show that firms’ perceptions of aggregate...

Do empires affect attitudes towards the state long after their demise? We hypothesize that the Habsburg Empire with its localized and well-respected administration increased citizens' trust in local public services. In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the...

Do empires affect human values and behavior long after their demise? We hypothesize that the Habsburg Empire, which was characterized by a localized and well-respected administration, increased people's trust in local state services. In several Eastern Euro-pean countries, communities on both...

We investigate the impact of bank competition on the use of collateral in loan contracts. We develop a theoretical model incorporating information asymmetries in a spatial competition framework where banks choose between screening the borrower and asking for collateral. We show that the presence...

Abstract: Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. We study how business groups can substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. In a two period model, there is no contract enforcement in the first period. The firms...

In transition and developing countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption even if they have democratic political systems. This is surprising from a political economy perspective, as the majority of people generally suffers from high corruption levels. Our model is based on the fact...