Mit großen Ambitionen startete vor einem Vierteljahrhundert das Projekt „Deutsche Einheit“. Schon bald, so die verbreitete Erwartung, würden die ostdeutschen Länder sein wie „der Westen“. Heute, 25 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall, sind die wirtschaftlichen Divergenzen zwischen Ostdeutschland...

In many countries, fiscal policy became strongly expansionary in order to fight the recession. Structural budget deficits increased sharply and might remain high after the end of the recession. This would raise real interest rates and would impair economic growth. Some measures to reduce the...

Germany has had an extremely low growth performance since 1995. The paper looks at the long-run reasons for this loss of economic dynamics besides German unification: These include leaving labor idle, a declining share of investment in GDP, a weaker innovative activity, an ineffective system for...

It is sometimes argued that more advertising raises consumption which in turn stimulates output and so economic growth. We test this hypothe- sis using annual German data expressed in terms of GDP for the period 1950-2000. We find that advertising does not Granger-cause growth but Granger-causes...

Empirical studies analyzing the effect of climate change on output growth sometimes neglect economic variables. This yields a biased picture of the growth process and does not represent a good approximation of the true data generating process. Thus, the question arises how valid the results are...