Forecasts of macroeconomic variables as the inflation rate serve as important guidelines for the private as well as the public sector. At least central banks that adopted an inflation targeting regime are in urgent need of high quality inflation forecasts. Accurate inflation forecasts are also...

Traditionell werden Prognosen über den Ausgang von politischen Wahlen aus Befragungsdaten gewonnen. Seit etwas mehr als einem Jahrzehnt beschäftigen sich auch Ökonomen vermehrt mit der Frage, wie eine gute Wahlprognose gewonnen werden kann. Als Instrument hierzu wurde die politische...

We report and analyze the results of a series of classroom experiments on the voluntary provision of public goods. Using fixed effect panel regression models we find that cooperation significantly increases when participants are forced to guess the degree of overall cooperation. We also find...

This note focuses on the role of the planning horizon in monetary policy games. We analyze the case of an uncertain horizon of the monetary policy game that has not been considered, yet. In addition to that we will - different from the basic Barro-Gordon-model - assume a quadratic loss function...

Rational partisan theory of political business cycles suggests differences in inflation under left-wing and right-wing governments. It also suggests temporary post-electoral booms after election of left-wing governments and temporary recessions after election of right-wing ones. However, the...

In 1996/1997 Bulgaria was hit by a severe financial crisis, spreading from a banking crisis to a currency crisis. However, in comparison to the Asian, the Russian or the recent Tango Crisis the Bulgarian Crisis did arouse relatively low international interest. We argue that the Bulgarian...

In a meta study of 25 political stock markets conducted in Germany in the last decade we analyze their predictive success. Although the predictions of political stock markets are highly correlated with the corresponding polls, the markets are able to aggregate additional information. One...

Die Ökonomische Theorie des Haftungsrechts kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß Haftungsregeln unter bestimmten Bedingungen dazu geeignet sind, externe Effekte zu internalisieren. Die allokativen Wirkungen von verschiedenen Haftungsregeln wurden in Deutschland insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der...