Die angestrebte Aufnahme osteuropäischer Staaten in die EU ist insgesamt die fünfte Erweiterung des europäischen Binnenmarkts, stellt aber nach Ansicht der Autoren trotz der bisherigen Erfahrungen die schwerste Aufgabe der EU dar.Die Entscheidungsvariablen, die eine Aufnahme osteuropäischer...

In our analysis, we examine the convergence of all recent ten European Union (EU) members to EU standards. Novel features of the paper include more complete measures of convergence, in particular fiscal convergence; a broader examination of inflation convergence with respect to the Maastricht...

How do different components of the tax and transfer systems affect disposable income inequality? This paper explores the redistributive effects of different tax benefit instruments in the enlarged EU based on two approaches. Inequality analysis based on the standard approach suggests that...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of the tax and transfer systems in the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the current economic crisis. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 per cent of a proportional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 per cent in the...