The process of European integration has gained considerable momentum during the past couple of years. This paper provides an assessment of the degree of integration of both the accession states of central and eastern Europe and of the pre-ins for monetary union with respect to Germany. Using...

The construction bust which accompanied the Great Recession, and the accompanying need to shift workers across sectors, have provoked a discussion about mismatch and the Beveridge Curve, alongside a discussion about firm-level dispersion. These discussions echo an ongoing discussion about the...

We investigate the controversial issue whether unemployment is related to productivity growth in the long run, using U.S. data in a framework of infrequent mean shifts. Tests find (endogenously dated) shifts around 1974, 1986, and 1996, system techniques indicate that the shifts are common...

This paper outlines a simple regression-based method to decompose the variance of an aggregate time series into the variance of its components, which is then applied to measure the relative contributions of productivity, hours per worker, and employment to cyclical output growth across a panel...

Persistently high unemployment rates in Germany have led to a long-running controversy on the causes of the unemployment problem. This paper aims to re­view the contribution of Keynesian and monetarist theories to this controversy and explores empirically their implications for the explanation...

This paper quantifies the impact of incentives related to potential membership on institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators (WBGI). Based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2008 we show that pre-accession incentives provided by EU and...

This paper analyses potential internal and external determinants of institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators (WBGI) based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2005. We show that natural resources and capital inflows exert an...

With twelve new members the decision making in the European Union via intergovernmental cooperation will become ineffective. In order to avoid a Stagno-Europe the EU has a choice: Either it looks for the very essentials in the common institutional frame or the member states agree in ceding...

This paper revisits Political Budget Cycles (PBCs) in the enlarged European Union (EU). Based on a panel of 25 current EU member states from 1996 to 2012, we show that governments frequently fiscally stimulate the economy prior to elections; a phenomenon that is seemingly not only an ‘Eastern...

Institutional development in new and potential member countries determines the success of both the catching-up of developing European countries and the deepening of the European integration process. This paper argues that the timing of future enlargement should depend on institutional...