Public procurement accounts for 15 to 20 percent of global GDP and is considered an effective innovation policy. However, the detrimental effects of non-innovative public procurement - public procurement tenders awarded solely based on their price - on firm innovations have been largely...

This paper tries to explain the declining level of public investment in OECD countries. The theoretical framework hints to the relevance of a number of demand and supply factors - ranging from the yield of public investment to institutions like the EU deficit limits. The econometric results...

This paper examines the distributional impacts from (i) harmonizing prices for carbon dioxide emissions across sectors and EU countries and (ii) using alternative rules for carbon revenue distribution. We develop a numerical multi-country multi-sector general equilibrium model of the EU-27...

Independent and high-quality evaluations of government policies are an important input for designing evidence-based policy. Lack of incentives and institutions to write such evaluations, on the other hand, carry the risk of turning the system into a costly beauty contest. We study one of the...

In its current setup, the European Union is often characterised as slow, decision-impeding, inefficient and therefore not really ready for enlargement. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the increasingly uncertain role in the global economy have further increased the high...

By international comparison as well as compared to other EU policies, the EU‘s Cohesion Policy (CP) evaluation system is far developed and institutionalized. This paper analyses the remaining gaps and shortcomings in the CP evaluation system against principles established by the OECD and...

Ideally a new reform of the EU trade regime for bananas (COMB) should be equipped in a way that it makes a long-term contribution to the realisation of sustainable goals, or at least does not prevent them. From a point of view of sustainable development, a trade restriction measure has to...

The paper applies standard public choice reasoning to the negotiations on EU enlargement and the Treaty of Nice. The starting point is the assumption that accession can only be successfully completed if the interests of decisive actors in present EU countries are respected. Decisive actors in...