Foreign trade is usually not based on cash transactions, but rather sales on credit are the rule. The resulting monitoring costs for lenders and the risk of default on accounts receivable are part of the costs associated with cross-border goods transactions. Relative to domestic trade credit, cross-border credit creates trade barriers due to differences in language, business practice, jurisdiction and payment enforceability between trading partners. Export credit insurance has long been a domain of public export credit agencies. Only since the early 1980s private insurance is gaining ground. Using disaggregated panel data for goods exports from Austria over the period 1996 to 2002, we show that public export credit guarantees have a less than proportional positive effect on international trade volume. They predominantly affect the country structure of foreign trade but leave the industry specialisation almost unchanged. Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd .

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThe integration of European services markets and the associated deregulation measures open up formerly segmented markets to competition from the Single Market. The purpose of this study is to propose a method of measuring the effects of liberalization on technical efficiency, the existence of economies of scale and diversification, and the dynamic development of productivity for the insurance industry. As an example we construct efficiency frontiers for the years 1992 through 1996 for the Austrian insurance industry using a Data Envelopment Analysis. The results provide yardsticks for efficiency comparisons from a consumer perspective and can be used to construct a Malmquist productivity index for the transition period.

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Badinger H. and Url T. (2002) Determinants of regional unemployment: some evidence from Austria, Reg. Studies 36, 977-988. Using a spatial filtering technique we estimate an empirical model of regional unemployment for a sample of Austrian regions. The spatial filtering technique removes the spatial correlation from the data and allows us to assess the importance of purely spatial effects. We find significant relations between the regional unemployment rate and relative regional wages transaction costs as reflected by the share of public housing, job vacancies, the share of employees in the manufacturing sector and a social assistance variable. Spatial effects account for about one-fifth of the variation in the unemployment rate.Local labour market, Spatial filtering, Austria,