This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual's decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...

We investigate the influence of government size on the exposure of consumption growth to country-specific fluctuations in output growth using a sample of OECD countries. To the extent that governments are less constrained on international financial markets, it appears conceivable that...

In this paper we empirically explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system influence the international allocation of consumption risk using a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the...

Using modern methods for analyzing multi-level data, we find that, by and large, citizens of OECD countries are more satisfied with the way democracy works in their country if more environmental policies are in place and if environmental quality is higher. We also document that parents care...

The present value model of the current account has been very popular, as it provides an optimal benchmark to which actual current account series have often been compared. We show why persistence in observed current account data makes the estimated optimal series very sensitive to small-sample...

Estimations of the shadow economies for 145 countries, including developing, transition and highly developed OECD economies over 1999 to 2005 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2004/05 in 96 developing countries is 36.7%, in 25 transition...

OECD unemployment rates show long swings which dominate shorter business cycle components and these long swings show a range of common patterns. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries 1960-2002, we estimate the common factor that drives unemployment by the first principal component. This factor has...

Using a panel data set for OECD countries we replicate the typical features of the New Keynesian Phillips curve models (NPCs) that have been estimated on country data. While this corroborates the NPC also on the macro panel data set, a different conclusion is reached when we test whether the NPC...

This article examines the location choices of cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) between OECD members´ firms in the 1990`s. In addition to traditional determinants of FDI, we estimate the impact of specific factors affecting the M&A location pattern. Two distinct econometric methods...

The paper proposes a technique to jointly tests for groupings of unknown size in the cross sectional dimension of a panel and estimates the parameters of each group, and applies it to identifying convergence clubs in income per-capita. The approach uses the predictive density of the data,...