A rational financial constitution of the EU should be able to fulfil redistributive objectives at minimum costs. The present financial system of the Community is not compatible with this requirement. After the decisions of the European Council in Berlin on the Agenda 2000 the fundamental flaw of...

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...

Tax competition arguments suggest that governements that operate in an open economy (such as local governments) should not and will not rely on non-benefit taxes, such as the income tax. Yet we observe reliance on income taxes by local governments in many countries, and such reliance changes...

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...

Drawing on recent work on the creation and breakup of countries, this paper examines the impact of economic and political integration on the vertical government structure. It argues that by increasing the market size and the benefits from the decentralized provision of public goods, integration...