1 This paper investigates the relationship between the growth of road net2 works and regional development. We test for mutual causality between the 3 growth of road networks (which are divided functionally into local roads and 4 highways) and changes in county-level population and employment. We 5 employ a panel data set containing observations of road mileage by type 6 for all Minnesota counti...

An important question for the development of the East German labour market in the transition to a market economy is whether wage differentials by qualification, industry or region which were relatively small in the former GDR adjust to those in market economies which are more in line with differences in productivities and economic conditions. We estimate empirical earnings functions to quantify...

This study investigates the firm-specific factors affecting the profitability of non-life insurance companies operating in Turkey. For this purpose, data of 24 non-life insurance companies operating in Turkey from the period 2006–2013 were brought together to obtain 192 observed panel data sets. In this study, profitability is measured by two different variables: technical profitability ratio a...

We explore theoretically and empirically whether social interaction, including local and global interaction, influences the incidence of corruption. We first present an interaction-based model on corruption that predicts that the level of corruption is positively associated with social interaction. Then we empirically verify the theoretical prediction using within-country evidence at the provin...

Subsidies and Exports in Germany: First Evidence from Enterprise Panel Data We use newly available representative panel data for manufacturing enterprises in West and East Germany to investigate the link between production-related subsidies and exports. We document that only a small fraction of enterprises is subsidized, and that exports and subsidies are positively related. Using a matching ap...

The authors use a panel data regression model to examine the effects of main monetary policy instruments on commercial bank risks in China from 1998 to 2011. The interest rate has a positive effect on bank risk while the interest rate margin, the reserve requirement ratio and open market operation have a negative effect. Among the three monetary policy instruments, the reserve requirement ratio...

The author presents new evidence on the effects of attendance on academic performance. He used a large panel data set for introductory microeconomics students to explicitly take into account the effect of unobservable factors correlated with attendance, such as ability, effort, and motivation. He found that neither proxy variables nor instrumental variables provide a solution to the omitted var...

The paper explains IMF and World Bank lending and conditionality stressing changes in relative bargaining power of different stakeholders over time. It applies public choice theory to explain the interests of the institutions’ member states, its borrowers and staffs as well as private actors attaching their money to the IFIs’ programs. Using panel data for 43 countries between 1987–99 it is sho...

W examine how initial public offerings (IPOs) and acquisitions affect entrepreneurial innovation as measured by patent counts and forward patent citations. We construct a firm-year panel data set of all venture capital-backed biotechnology firms founded between 1980 and 2000, tracked yearly through 2006. We address the possibility of unobserved self-selection into exit mode by using coarsened e...

We develop a structural consumer lifecycle model to investigate consumers’ adoption and usage decisions of ATM cards in Italy. By estimating a model of consumers’ optimal usage decisions and embedding it into a forward-looking consumer adoption decision model, we can “impute” per period monetary benefits of adopting the financial innovation. This in turn allows us to recover the monetary value ...