This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years - a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that...

Institutions - the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions - are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This paper shows that...

The paper studies the major institutional changes that are at the root of the increase in the west European unemployment rate in the last quartercentury from below 3 percent to 11 percent. The institutional characteristics of wage bargaining, the tax wedge and the legal rules hamper the...

This paper is an empirical critique of Barry Eichengreen's interpretation of the exceptional growth performance of Western Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. The main part of the paper shows that, at least for the important case of West Germany, Eichengreen fs view of a broad-based economic and...

This paper presents a synoptic interpretation of structural unemployment in Europe. The paper consists of three parts. Part 1 summarises some major stilysed facts of the record and the state of unemployment in Europe. In part 2, these facts are taken as the basis for a theoretical interpretation...

Recent research has emphasized the influence of colonization on the institutional development and economic performance in former European colonies. Where European colonizers settled, they replicated the investment-conducive institutions found at home. It has been argued that a harsh disease...

Der Erfolg der marktorientierten Wirtschaftsreformen in Ungarn, Polen und der Sowjetunion hängt entscheidend davon ab, ob es diesen Ländern gelingt, die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit mit ihren Nachbarn im Westen zu verstärken. Um die unvermeidliche Anpassungskrise meistern zu können, sind...

Eastern Europe is in the midst of a radical change. In order to increase the chances of success of their Perestroika, the reformers, especially those from Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union, are striving for closer links between their countries and the economically-advanced Western , Europe....

The winds of change are blowing through Europe. In the western half of the divided continent the European Community (EC) is setting about to complete its Internal Market by the end of 1992, in the East various members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) are striving for a...