One of the most notable events of the world economy over the past twenty years has been the phenomenal growth in the number of international economic integration agreements, such as free trade agreements. This paper discusses the roles of “competitive liberalization” by nations’...

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have proliferated over the past 50 years such that the number of pairs of countries with BITs is roughly as large as the number of country-pairs that belong to bilateral or regional preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The purpose of this study is to provide...

This paper proposes a model where heterogeneous firms choose whether to undertake R&D or not. Innovative firms are more productive, have larger investment opportunities and lower own funds for necessary tangible continuation investments than non-innovating firms. As a result, they are...

This paper presents empirical evidence of a positive effect of council size on government spending using a dataset of 2,056 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria over a period of 21 years. We apply a regression discontinuity design to avoid an endogeneity bias. In particular, we exploit...

<heading format="display" id="h1" implicit="yes" level="1">Abstract</heading> This paper examines the impact of capital market integration on higher education and the link to economic growth. The analysis takes into account that participation in higher education is non-compulsory and depends on individual choice. Due to capital-skill complementarity, integration...

<heading format="display" id="h1" implicit="yes" level="1">Abstract</heading> In most countries, profit taxation is probably much more relevant nowadays than trade liberalisation when it comes to firm-level decisions about investment. Empirically, firms are quite heterogeneous with regard to fixed costs: the composition of assets (tangible versus intangible;...

In an earlier paper, we showed that bilateral exchange rates are important determinants of multinational activity of both the US and Japan and that increases in the bilateral and third-country exchange rates exert opposing effects on bilateral multinational activity. Furthermore, the signs of...

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states from two pools, the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund. The main goal of the associated transfers is to facilitate convergence of poor regions (in terms of per-capita income) to the EU average. We use data at...

The impact electoral rules and fiscal equalization programs have for local public finance are separately analyzed in the literature. This paper empirically analyzes whether legislator elected under different rules respond differently to changes in fiscal incentives. Using a reform of the...