The obvious discrepancy between the predictions of the standard model of private provision of public goods and empirical indications have led many economists to search for alternative explanations of the phenomenon of voluntary contributions. Whilst concentrating on models of donor motivation,...

Which groups have particularly low pension entitlements and are therefore most at risk of poverty in old age? Participation in the labour force for some individuals may be interrupted for a variety of reasons, including education, unemployment, raising children or caring for relatives, all of...

The German Excellence Initiative was intended to strengthen university-based research and to create a set of internationally competitive elite institutions. The present article analyses whether or not designation as an elite institution has had an impact on the number of first-year students. Our...

Since 2006 school achievement of German students has been measured on a regular basis within the so-called national educational monitoring. The most recent results show considerable differences between the states. At first glance, students in the eastern and southern states perform well while...

The present paper considers public debt in an economy where human capital formation sustains long-run per capita income growth. It shows that contrary to what has been obtained in other types of endogenous growth economies public debt may benefit current and future generations by removing...

A trade union whose purpose is to raise wages above the competitive level may foster economic growth if it succeeds in shifting income away from the owners of capital to the workers and if the workers' marginal propensity to save exceeds that of capitalists. We make this point in an overlapping...

How do national minimum wages affect global economic growth? We address this question in a two-country endogenous growth model with capital mobility that emphasizes a link between wages, savings and growth. We identify the conditions on technology and national preferences that determine whether...

The upgrading process through imitation is analyzed for a technologically backward country in an industrialized neighborhood. Depending on human capital, trade policy and R&D expenditures, two regimes of development can be identified. A regime of increasing relative backwardness and a regime of...