This volume was prepared by Julian Dieler while he was working with the Center for Energy, Climate and exhaustible Resources at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. At the latest since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 climate policies are permanently on the international policy...

More than one third of the European Union's total budget is spent on socalled Cohesion Policy via the structural funds. Its main purpose is to promote the development of the EU and to support convergence between the levels of development of the various European regions. Investigating the impact...

This dissertation consists of six self-contained chapters that are related to the behavior of firms and politicians in a broader sense. After an introduction to the topic, the first part of the dissertation elaborates on how institutional and political framework conditions influence the behavior...