Economic evaluation in health care often involves cost-utility analysis (CUA), a method based on the cost-effectiveness criterion of dollars per Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY), where the quality adjustement factors for years lived in ill health are established through answers to...

In the late 1980s privatization and down-sizing of nationalized steel mills and related firms in the metal industry have lead to large-scale redundancy plans. A special Steel Foundation was created as part of a social plan. This foundation acted like an independent training center, where...

This paper develops a model of the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. The proposed two-country monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities encompasses the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature: correlation of...

The details on rules and modalities for the inclusion of forestry projects in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are one of the last non resolved implementation issues of the Kyoto Protocol. We examine in detail the implications of different policy decisions concerning the inclusion of CDM...

At the beginning of december 2003 the nineth conference of the parties (COP) of the UN framework convention on climate change (Rio declaration 1992) will take place. This meeting is crucial as it depends only on russia´s ratification to get the Kyoto protocol started soon. This paper reflects...

After greenhouse gas emission trading on country level had been proposed by the Kyoto Protocol agreed on in 1997, a discussion on the introduction of national schemes with entities as participants ensued. This discussion also raised the question if and how such systems can be linked. We first...

This paper attempts to evaluate the macroeconomic impact of venture capital (VC). We test the assumption that VC is similar in several respects to business R&D performed by large firms and therefore contributes to economic growth through two main channels: innovation and absorptive capacity. The...

Many of the EU accession countries have announced that they will not only try to enter the EU as quickly as possible but also to adopt the euro at an early date. This is justified by the effort to avoid the danger of financial instability in the period prior to euro-introduction. However, by...

This paper reviews theory and evidence of the welfare effects of inflation from a costbenefit perspective. Basic models and selected empirical results are discussed. Historically, in assessing the welfare effects of inflation, the distortion of money demand played a prominent role. More...

In this paper, we take up the question why a group of sovereign countries is willing to form a federation even if residents of the high-income region suspect potential immigrants to be net beneficiaries of the tax and transfer system. We argue that income uncertainty alone cannot satisfactorily...