Neo-liberal globalisation has primarily entailed the liberalisation of trade and capital flows, but largely ignored the issue of labour mobility. Most literature on the political economy of globalisation likewise ignores global labour mobility. This paper first asks how globalisation affects...

Countries are often slow to adjust their economic structures to new necessities although this reform reluctance is costly in terms of growth and employment. This paper analyses the relevant factors that block or foster economic reforms. Theoretical considerations show that there are at least...

In a constantly changing economic environment a country's ability to undertake institutional reforms is crucial to maintain economic growth and to promote the welfare of its citizens. A wide range of determinants for institutional reforms have been identified. However, the impact of trust on...

We analyse the effect of IMF and World Bank policies on the composite index of economic freedom by Gwartney et al. (2000) as well as its sub-indexes, using a panel of 85 countries observed between 1970 and 1997. With respect to the Bank, we find that the number of projects has a positive impact...

In this paper I portray "neo-liberalism" in its original conceptual meaning as opposed to the generic term of depreciation as which it is commonly used. I identify fair competition and the denial of all privilege as the major concerns of original neo-liberals. Ethical merit for competition...

In this paper, a new approach to disclose the impact of politics on economic growth is presented: we use data derived from content analysis of party manifestos as measures of party preferences. In a panel of 23 OECD countries, we detect a positive impact of party support for various...

This paper relates the political decision-process which allowed Germany to transform its planned economic system into a Social Market Economy after the Second WorldWar. The central problem of the paper is to understand how the Social MarketEconomy emerged in Germany. Was it primarily an imported...

[Introduction ...] This paper tries to answer these questions taking five steps of argumentation. Firstly, the paper briefly sketches the theoretical and empirical background of the modern liberal market economy concept. Secondly, it outlines in more detail the basic ideas of the ordoliberal...

We present new evidence on how generalized trust is formed. Unlike previous studies, we look at the explanatory power of economic institutions, we use newer data, we incorporate more countries, and we use instrumental variables to handle the causality problem. A central result is that legal...

Liberal economic precepts have long been a foundation for the social science of poverty and continue to profoundly influence public policy. Liberal economics contends that poverty is dependent on the harmonious progress of economic growth, free market capitalism, worker productivity, and the...