This paper follows the footprints of Arthur F. Burns and Wesley C. Mitchell in their methodology of business cycle research as developed and implemented at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Turning points of the West German business cycle are identified using the Bry-Boschan procedure...

Destabilizing political incidents may have dramatic effects on economic conditions. Foreign creditors and investors, in particular, may be reluctant to lend resources to a country whose internal stability seems shaky. We use a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to quantify the effect...

This paper presents a case study on commissioned economic research in Germany. We find deplorable methodological and empirical shortcomings in a prominent study by Munich's ifo-Institute, on aspects of horizontal fiscal revenue sharing between German states. We suspect that this may not be an...

I suggest a concept of convergence stronger than [sigma]-convergence. This concept, [rho]-convergence, is equivalent to [beta]-divergence in reverse time and implies bounds for convergence speed of merely [sigma]-convergent economies. Empirically, the [rho]-concept detects divergence earlier...