The paper investigates the business cycle relationships between the EU-15, the EU-11, as well as the EU-core countries for the period 1971 to 1997. Emphasis is put on the question whether there is a synchronization in the national business cycles or not. Using One-way- and Two-way-Anova...

The main characteristic of the implementation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) is the transition from various national currencies to the Euro, the common European currency. A final fixing of the individual bilateral exchange rates of all European countries involved in the Monetary Union...

Using panel data on European regions and applying Analysis of Covariance, our study provides an empirical assessment of the relative importance of national, regional and spatial factors for explaining variations of productivity. Our analysis shows that initial economic conditions or...

While there is some hope that the ongoing climate change negotiations will soon come up with concrete, time scheduled and binding emission reduction commitments, the question of how to achieve these targets is still unsolved. The objective of this paper is to analyse alternative settings of an...

This paper analyses the growth effects of EU structural funds using a new panel dataset of 124 NUTS-1 / NUTS-2 regions over the time period 1995-2005. We extend the current literature with regard to at least three aspects: First of all, we extend the time period of investigation, using...

The EU's revenue system is still typical for an organisation based on international cooperation and stands in contrast to the Union's far advanced legislative and political role. This contrast feeds the debate on granting the EU an autonomous tax source. Our contribution explores the factors...

This paper investigates whether and in what sense the west German wage structure has been "rigid" in the 1990s. To test the hypothesis that a rigid wage structure has been responsible for rising low-skilled unemployment, I propose a methodology which makes less restrictive identifying...

In diesem Beitrag wird neben einem kurzen Überblick über die Argumentationsweise und Probleme der Theorie optimaler Währungsräume ein neues Beurteilungskriterium vorgestellt: die politische Reformfähigkeit potentieller Mitgliedstaaten einer Währungsunion. Hintergrund für diese Erweiterung...

At the turn of the millennium three frequently cited potential causes of new challenges for wage policy in Germany are revisited in this study: skilled- biased technological progress, the increasing international integration of labor and product markets, and the monetary integration of the EMU....