We explore the pattern of elderly homeownership using microeconomic surveys of 15 OECD countries, merging 60 national household surveys on about 300,000 individuals. In all countries the survey is repeated over time, permitting construction of an international dataset of repeated cross-sectional...

The 'big trade-off', described by Arthur Okun some thirty years ago, is back again. Equality or efficiency, or to put it differently again: modern highly developed economies and societies have to choose between the Scylla of income inequality or the Charybdis of unemployment. Furthermore, it...

This paper addresses the question of whether and how easy monetary policy may lead to excesses in financial and real asset markets and ultimately result in financial dislocation. It presents evidence suggesting that periods when short-term interest rates have been persistently and significantly...

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...

We focus on the influence of institutional variables on business cycle synchronisation for 20 OECD countries from 1979 to 2003. More precisely, this paper derives measures for similarity of institutions and structural reforms, and investigates direct and delayed reform effects on synchronisation...

We examine the global dimension of inflation in 24 OECD countries between 1980 and 2007 in a traditional Phillips curve framework. We decompose output gaps and changes in unit labor costs into common (or global) and idiosyncratic components using a factor analysis and introduce these components...

Global liquidity expansion has been very dynamic since 2001. Contrary to conventional wisdom, high money growth rates have not coincided with a concurrent rise in goods prices. At the same time, however, asset prices have increased sharply, significantly outpacing the subdued development in...

In this paper, we quantitatively assess education policy change in OECD countries. While research in social policy has shown that convergence in welfare provision can only partially be assessed in OECD countries, it has yet to be assessed to what extent this also concerns the sector of...

Our paper decomposes knowledge-diffusing trade flows and estimates their impacts separately. Overall, trade generates positive knowledge spillovers, but the effects of intra-industry trade are ambiguous. With regard to sectoral import penetration, we find that potential positive spillovers are...

There are basically three stories about the globalisation-welfare state nexus. The first story argues that globalisation is the cause of the chronic crisis of the welfare state. As national economies open to the international market, governments are forced to adapt to the imperatives of global...