This paper provides an analysis of the impact of the German “Joint Task for the Improve-ment of Regional Economic Structures” (GRW) on labour productivity growth of 225 German labour market regions for the period 1994 to 2006. The empirical regression approach builds on a “Barro-type”...

This study tests the hypothesis that balanced-budget rules (BBRs) that restrict public borrowing to investments in public infrastructure increase growth by increasing the productivity of debt, either because investments in public infrastructure are more productive than other uses for which...

Following Max Weber, many theories have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With its religious heterogeneity, the Holy Roman Empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis. Using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300–1900, I find...

The paper provides an alternative explanation for the “resource curse” based on the income effect resulting from high government current spending in resource rich economies. Using a simple life cycle framework, we show that private investment in the non-resource sector is adversely affected...

Poverty and inequality around the world has been rising over the last three decades and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seems a far fetched goal. In explaining underdevelopment, Classical Economics has offered many theories and models including but not limited to...

This paper investigates to what extent the different subsectors of the knowledge economy are subject to sector-specific spatial patterns of employment dynamics, and whether these patterns are conditional upon the general economic climate in a particular region. To this end, we analyze and...

The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area has raised interest in early warning indicators, aimed at signalling the build-up of fiscal stress in advance and helping prevent crises by means of a timely counteraction of fiscal and macroeconomic policies. This paper presents possible improvements...

In this paper we reflect on the role that fiscal policy could play in the resolution of the crisis in Eurozone countries crippled by both public and private debt, and beset by growth and competitiveness problems. As an illustration, we revisit the Spanish case, a paradigmatic example of the...

Should rational agents take into consideration government policy announcements? A skilled agent (an econometrician) could set up a model to combine the following two pieces of information in order to anticipate the future course of fiscal policy in real-time: (i) the ex-ante path of policy as...

This article analyses the redistributive efficiency of public spending and taxation in a panel of both advanced and developing economies during the last three decades (1984-2012). In order to explore how redistribution is achieved through fiscal policies, a two-stage approach is applied. First,...