Comparing the economic development and current situation of the internal markets of the U.S. and the EU, two things are noticeable. On the one hand, the EU is conducting massive regional policy programmes (notably the Structural Funds) to foster economic cohesion among the 27 nations belonging...

This paper reconsiders the theoretical foundations of EU regional policy in economics. It begins with a discussion of the line of thought of its prevalent explanation in equilibrium economics which is focusing on market failures as its key underpinning and which is the major toolkit of...

This paper reconsiders the economic explanation of EU regional policy from an evolution- ary perspective. It contrasts the neoclassical equilibrium notions of market and government failure with the prevalent evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian and Austrian-Hayekian percep- tions. Based on this...

In this paper we investigate the profitability of ?skewness trades? and ?kurtosis trades? based on comparisons of implied state price densities versus historical densities. In particular, we examine the ability of SPD comparisons to detect structural breaks in the options market behaviour. While...

Durch das Interesse deutscher Unternehmen an einer weltweit einheitlichen Aktie hat sich in letzter Zeit eine Umstellung auf die Namensaktie durchgesetzt. Diese Entwicklung beruht einerseits auf der Verbesserung des Abwicklungssystems CASCADE RS der Clearstream Banking AG, Frankfurt am Main...

This paper analyses annual, age-specific retirement rates in Germany between 1971 and 1991. The time-series data show significant changes in overall and age-specific retirement behavior over the 21 year period. The literature provides two alternative explanations for the observed developments:...

This paper analyzes the Croatian legislation on Value Added Tax (VAT) during the period 1995-2008. First, we describe the most important VAT reforms. We show that the preferential tax treatment of particular products and industries fails to reach the tax legislator's economic and socio-political...

A major application of rescaled adjusted range analysis (RS analysis) is the study of price fluctuations in financial markets. There, the value of the Hurst constant, H, in a time series may be interpreted as an indicator of the irregularity of the price of a commodity, currency or similar...