Our analysis of new bathymetric data reveals six submarine landslides at the eastern Sunda margin between central Java and Sumba Island, Indonesia. Their volumes range between 1 km³ in the Java fore-arc basin up to 20 km³ at the trench off Sumba and Sumbawa. We estimate the potential hazard...

The suggested changes to German orthography are among last year's most fervently debated topics. The article identifies the individual and collective costs and benefits of such a change and, from the point of view of standardization economics, inquires into the conditions under which such a...

In this paper, recent accounting scandals in Germany are traced back to a serious incentive problem in German auditing law. Since the auditor depends economically on his client, contrary to the legislator's intention, a factual forcing contract is established which enables the client to control...

In this paper we measure the speed at which firms adjust to demand shocks using individual firm data. Identification of shocks is achieved by a combination of quantitative and qualitative judgments on capacity utilisation in micro survey data. A novel feature of our approach is the distinction...

In this paper we develop a business cycle measure that can be shown to have excellent ex-ante forecasting properties for GDP growth. For identifying business cycle movements, we use a semantic approach. We infer nine different states of the economy directly from firms’ responses in business...

The former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt holds that despite the huge transfers from West to East Germany the East German economy does not take off as it was widely expected. We argue it is not despite these transfers but because of them. Building on the common features of the extension of the...

This paper investigates the claim made by Kehoe and Prescott (2002) that Switzerland and New Zealand experienced 'great depressions' in the last two decades. We question the appropriateness of the measure used by Kehoe and Prescott (GDP per working-age person) and propose a more accurate measure...

In der Diskussion um die Frage, wie ökonomische Bildung im allgemeinbildenden Schulwesen in Deutschland verankert werden soll, wird der Stellenwert der Wirtschaftswissenschaften als Bezugsdisziplin aktuell kontrovers diskutiert. Wir vertreten in dieser Diskussion die These, dass die Anbindung...