Germany’s system of economic and political governance strongly relies on group decision-making and consensus to solve economic issues. This approach relates to a wide spectrum of decisions, including the social partners with the trade unions and the employers’ associations in wage formation,...

The paper discusses the decisions on the reform of the CAP from June 2003. The decisions focus on the decoupling of the direct payments to farmers from production. This will reduce production incentives and thereby improve the allocation of resources. However, payments to farmers will hardly be...

The paper discusses the decisions on the CAP in the context of the Berlin summit. In a rather broad perspective the agricultural sectoral and related objectives are analyzed for their consistency and compatability with higher ranking societal objectives. The policiesÂ’ allocational and...

The 'deforestation problem' in Brazil consists of a variety of interrelated issues, of which this paper identifies a regional, sectoral and macroeconomic dimension. Using a regionally and sectorally disaggregated general equilibrium model of Brazil, it is shown that macroeconomic reform is...

Corruption has fierce impacts on economic and societal development and is subject to a vast range of institutional, jurisdictional, societal and economic conditions. Research indicates that corruption's predominantly negative effects have arisen to a massive trans-border threat while creating...

In this paper, the authors analyze the behavior of local governments on capital taxation when the financial choices in terms of a public good quality are done by a central planner. More specifically, they ask the question whether a local government has an interest to tax the mobile factor in...

The paper looks at the global environment as a public good and as a sink for CO2-emissions. It discusses problems to be solved in institutional arrangements to protect global environmental media and looks at criteria for allocating the costs of emission reduction and emission rights. It analyzes...

Oceans regulate our climate, provide us with natural resources such as food, materials, substances, and energy and are essential for international trade, recreational, and cultural activities. Free access to and availability of ocean resources and services, together with human development, have...

Equal treatment for the present and the future was required in two axioms for sustainable development introduced by the author. This article shows that the two axioms are equivalent to awareness of physical limits in the long run future. We prove that two optimization problems are equivalent :...

In this paper, we elaborate on an idea initially developed by Weitzman (1998) that justifies taking the lowest possible discount rate for far-distant future cash flows. His argument relies on the arbitrary assumption that when the future rate of return of capital (RRC) is uncertain, one should...