Switzerland

The authors review the empirical literature that studies the relationship between foreign direct investment, productivity, and growth using aggregate data, and focus on two questions: (1) is there evidence of a positive relationship between foreign direct investment and national growth? and (2) does the output of the "multinational sectors" exhibit higher labor productivity? The authors also briefly discuss how the microeconomic evidence and a number of aggregation and composition problems might help explain the ambiguous results in this literature.

The Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on the health, socio-economic status, and social and family networks of older adults (aged 50 years and over) throughout Europe. Designed to provide a full picture of the aging process, SHARE collects data on a range of topics including health conditions, physical and cognitive functioning, mental health, life satisfaction, employment, income, education, social networks, and social support mechanisms.

This annual survey, fielded June to December 2004, was conducted in over 50 countries to solicit public opinion on social and political issues. Respondents were asked what they thought was the most important goal for the world as a whole, whether they trusted people from their ethnic group more than people from other ethnic groups, if they heard about various global institutions, and their thoughts of these institutions. They were also asked for their overall opinion of various countries.

This annual survey, fielded August to October 1999, was conducted in over 50 countries to solicit public opinion on social and political issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinion on the environment. Questions included the overall state that the environment is in, if the government has done too much, too little, or just the right amount concerning the environment, and the biggest threat to the environment for future generations.

This annual survey, fielded November 2003 to January 2004, was conducted in over 50 countries to solicit public opinion on social and political issues. Respondents were asked about the safety and economic prosperity of their country, the economic prosperity of their own family, whether they expected that the world would be safer for the next generation, and whether the next generation would be more economically prosperous. Views were also sought on international security, environmental security, national security, and economic security.

The European Social Survey (ESS) is a biennial multi-country social survey designed to chart and explain the interaction between Europe's changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior patterns of its diverse populations. Covering over 30 nations, the first round of the ESS was fielded in 2002-2003, the second round in 2004-2005, the third round in 2006-2007, and the fourth round in 2008-2009.

Fiscal adjustments have been examined from different perspectives in the literature. However, the conceptual approaches to the analysis of budget consolidations vary substantially. Therefore different approaches to the analysis of fiscal adjustments are discussed in a first step. It is shown that the choices regarding the underlying concepts lead to specific research designs and influence the appropriate empirical method. In a second step, the determinants of budget consolidations are examined empirically in four different research designs for 23 industrialized countries in the 1990s.

The main variable categories presented in these data include: Identification Numbers, Incident Date, Incident Location, Incident Information, Attack Information, Target Information, Perpetrator Information, Perpetrator Statistics, Perpetrator Claim of Responsibility, Weapon Information, Casualty Information, Consequences, Hostage/Kidnapping Additional Information, and Source Information. Sub-variables under Identification Number include: Coder and Event ID.

Variables provide group name (up to three groups), type of terrorist incident (assassination, bombing, facility attack, hijacking, kidnapping, maiming, assault, mass disruption, or arson), incident date (year, month, day of month), region, country, state in the United States (if applicable), city, whether the incident was just outside of the city, the type of target (business, government, police, military, abortion related, airport and airplanes, diplomatic, educational institution, food or water supply, journalists and media, maritime, NGO, private citizens and property, religious figures/ins

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) was designed to capture various aspects of firm creation and entrepreneurship across countries. The data have been collected over a number of years (1998-2003) and include responses from 4,685 experts in over 38 countries and three subnational regions. This study seeks to measure the national attributes considered critical for new firm births and small firm growth. The dataset is a harmonized file capturing the results from all of the surveys.