In a simple growth model we explore the current and future growth effects of the regional population structure. Regional GDP growth in 227 regions within six countries in central Europe is explored as how they depend on the young and old dependency ratio. The young dependency ratio (YDR) is...

An Englishman once watched his first American football game. He looked intently as the team gathered into a huddle after each play. His American host asked him what he thought of the proceedings. “Not a bad sport,” remarked the visitor, “but they do seem to engage in an excessive number of...

In this paper, we use a modified concept of Granger-(non)causality in reconsidering the negative correlation between stock returns and inflation known in the literature as stock return-inflation puzzle. Based on the quarterly data for Germany including stock returns, inflation rates and growth...

The paper analyses the recent supply side developments in France, Germany, and Italy by employing a non-parametric approach to estimate potential GDP. The analysis reveals marked heterogeneity among the three countries with regard to the contribution made by labour input. Where similarities can...

With this paper we seek to contribute to the literature on the relation between finance and growth. We argue that most studies in the field fail to measure the quality of financial intermediation but rather resort to using proxies on the size of financial systems. Moreover, cross-country...

The paper examines the role of the vertical structure of the public sector for economic growth in Germany in a long?term perspective. A theoretical model shows that, due to spillover effects of public service provision across lower level governments, federal government activities could have...

This paper explores the factors behind the time path of real spending and revenue in the West German states from 1975 to 2004. The empirical approach stresses robustness and takes into account a large set of economic and political variables. Our results suggest that common economic factors and,...

This study analyzes the sensitivity of US giving to both business cycle fluctuations and trend growth. With tax revenues as a point of reference, US giving constitutes a relatively stable source of revenue. Total giving is characterized by a business cycle volatility which is comparable to the...

The carry-over effect is the advance contribution of the old year to growth in the new year. Among practitioners the informative content of the carry-over effect for short-term forecasting is undisputed and is used routinely in economic forecasting. In this paper, the carry-over effect is...