Small enterprises are a key source of employment, economic growth, innovation and productivity in advanced as well as emerging economies and as such they are a crucial sector of an economy. Access to financing plays an important role for the small enterprise sector in any economy. Based on...

Nach über 20 Jahren Diskussionen liegen derzeit drei Modelle zur Reform der Grundsteuer vor. Sie basieren auf wert- und flächenbezogenen Bemessungsgrundlagen sowie einer Kombination aus beiden. Die Rechnungen zum regionalen Aufkommen belegen, dass die wertbasierten Modelle mit der höheren...

We provide an analysis of the housing market and current housing policies in three developed countries: the United Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, and the United States (US). We focus on these three countries mainly due to the marked differences in their institutional settings. The UK is...

Die drückende Finanznot vieler Kommunen lässt Wissenschaft und Praxis nach einer grundsätzlichen Lösung der Schuldenproblematik suchen. Dabei rückt zunehmend das Insolvenzverfahren für Kommunen in den Fokus. Es wird als eher marktwirtschaftlichautonom wirkender Lösungsmechanismus den...

This paper analyzes whether the expansion of regional airports in Germany caused positive spillover effects on the surrounding economies, exploiting the deregulation of the European aviation market as a quasi-experiment. Such potential spillovers are often used as an argument for the substantial...

State borders create a discontinuous tax treatment of retail sales. In a Nash game, local tax rates will be higher on the low-state-tax side of a border. Local taxes will decrease from the nearest high-tax border and increase from the low-tax border. Using driving time from state borders and all...

Deregulation and progress in information and communication technologies have increased the geographical expansion of banking structures and instruments. This makes banks operationally close to the borrowers. At the same time, banking industry consolidation have induced a geographical...

Greek governments have supported investments to rural areas financially either by covering part of the investment and/or offering advantages with respect to interest rate loans or tax advantages. This support had been tendered either by nationally financed programs, called Development Laws, or...

When estimating a specification combining different influences on local public choice, three public issues of different ideological attributes were compared for two periods of Portuguese local government intervention: the beginning and the ending of one electoral cycle. The most exciting results...

There have been numerous studies of the "impact" of HEIs on their host regions. These have typically focused on the demand for goods and services in the host region. The best of these studies employ regional input-output analyses. However, there has developed a "policy scepticism" about the...