With twelve new members the decision making in the European Union via intergovernmental cooperation will become ineffective. In order to avoid a Stagno-Europe the EU has a choice: Either it looks for the very essentials in the common institutional frame or the member states agree in ceding...

The euro is a new currency, and the ECB as a new institution still has to establish its reputation. The best way to do this is for the ECB to deliver a stable money. The two-pillar strategy pursued by the ECB seems to confuse the markets because market participants are unclear about which of the...

Das Papier diskutiert die Ausgestaltung des EU Finanzsystems aus polit-ökonomischer Perspektive. Die jetzige Form der Umverteilung lässt sich aus ökonomischer Sicht nicht nachvollziehen; vielmehr kann dies als ein System von politischen Seitenzahlungen verstanden werden. Es wird argumentiert,...

Der Artikel umfasst eine quantitative polit-ökonomische Analyse aktueller und zukünftiger Reformen der Gemeinsamen Europäischen Agrarpolitik unter unterschiedlichen Szenarios einer zukünftigen EU-Osterweiterung und zukünftigen WTO-Verhandlungen. Theoretische Grundlage der Analysen ist ein...

The paper applies standard public choice reasoning to the negotiations on EU enlargement and the Treaty of Nice. The starting point is the assumption that accession can only be successfully completed if the interests of decisive actors in present EU countries are respected. Decisive actors in...

While policymakers in Europe were busy implementing EMU during the past decade, persistently high unemployment, which should have been the main policy issue from a normative point of view, was essentially left untackled in most continental European countries. This poses the urgent question which...

How will EMU influence the European political economy? This paper argues that most of the likely alternatives are unsustainable for at least some of the EMU member-states. As a result, the Stability Pact imposed by the Kohl government and the Bundesbank is likely to be rejected by other...

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, in wie weit polit-ökonomische Ansätze den Prozess der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union erklären können. Eine grundlegende These der Arbeit lautet wie folgt: Kritiker der Theorien rationaler Entscheidungen beziehen sich häufig auf eine sehr...

Exchange-rate policies of Central Eastern European Countries (CEEC) have often been a subject matter. Yet, some new insights in terms of political economy considerations upon exchange-rate policy are provided. It is pointed out that it is more appropriate to analyse exchange-rate policy in...