Has the EU Directive Proposal on CO2 trade been influenced by lobbyism and can it be improved? After hypothesizing how the EU may be vulnerable to lobbyism and why industrial groups have a strong incentive to lobby for favourable environmental regulation, we turn to empirical evidence concerning...

The transition of the »Old Communist« countries of East and Central Europe has been disappointingly slow given the amount of physical and human capital available at the start of the <p> transition. We argue that this slowness is caused by the lack of social capital, which is an <p> important factor...</p></p>

We hypothesize, that power centralisation in a political system leads to more corruption due to the <p> monopoly power status of bureaucrats. Corruption again would then lead to a lower level of social capital, <p> here measured as trust, and slow down economic growth even further. Indeed, when...</p></p>