This paper investigates the impact of institutions or structural policies on the volatilityof income or GDP per capita in transition countries and in Kazakhstan in particular. Inthe first part of the paper we compare Kazakhstan’s institutional framework with othertransition economies based on...

This paper develops empirical growth models suitable for dual economies, and studiesthe relationship between structural change and economic growth. Changes in the structureof employment will raise aggregate productivity when the marginal product of labourvaries across sectors. The models in the...

In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to forecast gross value-added (GVA) and its sectoral subcomponents at the regional level. With an autoregressive distributed lagmodel we forecast total and sectoral GVA for one German state (Saxony) with more than 300 indicators from different...

We analyze the extent to which endogenous cultural amenities affect the spatial equilibriumshare of high-human-capital employees. To overcome endogeneity, we draw on a quasinaturalexperiment in German history and exploit the exogenous spatial distribution ofbaroque opera houses built as a part...

This paper investigates whether localization economies as brought forward by Marshall(1890) or urbanization economies as mentioned by Jacobs (1970) are more decisive forregional gross value added per capita. Our novel approach is to explicitly allow forinterdependencies between these two...

The advantages and disadvantages of public sector decentralization are widely discussedin economics and political science. While some authors argue that decentralization leads to an optimal provision of public services and a promotion of economic growth, others emphasize the dangers of...

A detailed analysis of the German productivity development is indispensable for understanding, why Europe is lagging behind the US growth since the mid 1990s. In this paper a new and unique database is used to analyze the sources of German productivity growth since 1970. It is shown that...

In the present paper I examine tax revenue projections in Germany over the period 1968 to 2012 with a focus on forecasting rationality. I show that tax revenue forecasts for themedium-term are upward biased. Overoptimistic revenue projections are particularly pronounced after the German...

This paper investigates the effects of implementing a dual income tax (DIT) in Germany. We follow the reform proposal of the German Council of Economic Advisors(2003) and analyze its implications on capital formation, investment and welfare using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model....