The objective of this paper is to investigate the trade potential of the fifteen old EU countries with the ten new members having joined on May 1st, 2004. Our focus lies not so much on the integration process already having taken place, but on the importance of institutional factors for trade....

This paper investigates the potential for a further increase in trade between the fifteen old EU members and the twelve new countries having joined in 2004 and 2007 that results from a convergence of the new members' institutions towards the level of the EU-15 in accordance with the Acquis...

Die deutsche Wirtschaft befindet sich derzeit in einem kräftigen Aufschwung. Das reale Bruttoinlandsprodukt wird in diesem Jahr voraussichtlich um 1,9% expandieren und im kommenden Jahr um 1,8%. Der private Konsum bleibt die Stütze des Aufschwungs, da die Einkommensperspektiven der privaten...

The use of large datasets for macroeconomic forecasting has received a great deal of interest recently. Boosting is one possible method of using high-dimensional data for this purpose. It is a stage-wise additive modelling procedure, which, in a linear specification, becomes a variable selection...