This paper assesses the strength of productivity spillovers non-parametrically in a data-set of 12 industries and 231 NUTS2 regions in 17 European Union member countries between 1992 and 2006. It devotes particular attention to measuring catching up through spillovers depending on the technology...

Heterogeneous firms invest in R&D and expansion investment. Venture capital specializes in R&D financing where problems are largest. Marginal firms get funded by venture capital, while firms with larger debt capacity obtain cheaper bank financing. In the latestage, cash-rich firms invest at an...

Transfers to individuals, firms, and regions are often regulated by threshold rules, giving rise to a regression discontinuity design. An example are transfers provided by the European Commission to regions of EU member states below a certain income level. Researchers have focused on estimation...

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...

Gravity models of international trade have been frequently applied to estimate the impact of common (official or spoken) language on bilateral trade. This study provides a meta-analysis based on 701 language effects collected from 81 academic articles. On average, a common (official or spoken)...

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a GDP per capita level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget....

Empirical trade economists have found that shocks on foreign direct investment (FDI) of some parent country in a host country affect the same parent country’s FDI in other hosts (interdependent hosts). Independent of this, there is evidence that shocks on a parent country’s FDI in some host...

Controlled foreign company (CFC) rules are frequently imposed by countries as part of their anti-tax-avoidance legislation. This paper aims at quantifying their impact on foreign investments by utilizing a regression discontinuity design and the universe of German foreign investments notified to...

This paper analyzes the influence of statutory corporate tax rates on profits and of double-taxation treaties (DTTs) on multinational firm (MNE) activity at the micro level. It provides an assessment of the effects of these profit tax instruments on the extensive and the intensive margin of...

This paper argues that the large reduction in corporate tax rates and only gradual widening of tax bases in many countries over the last decades are consistent with tougher international competition for foreign direct investment (FDI). To make this point we develop a model in which governments...