In order to guarantee a further successful functioning of the enlarged European Union a Federal European Constitution is proposed. Six basic elements of a future European federal constitution are developed: the European commission should be turned into an European government and the European...

This paper endeavours to illuminate the political and institutional factors that can help explain differing degrees of fiscal retrenchment in European Union countries for the time period 1990-2001. Several variants of the partisan approach and the veto players framework are elucidated and...

We develop a formal model of EU decision-making on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The model is used to evaluate under what conditions CAP reform occurs and what the influence of the European Commission (Commission) is on CAP reform. We find that the voting and amendment rules in the...

Im gegenwärtigen Europawahlkampf vertritt Jean-Claude Juncker die Ansicht, dass europäische Staaten mit konservativen Regierungen bessere wirtschaftliche Daten vorweisen können als Staaten mit sozialistischen Regierungen. Ob Regierungen unterschiedlicher parteipolitischer Zusammensetzung auch...

Im gegenwärtigen Europawahlkampf vertritt Jean-Claude Juncker die Ansicht, dass europäische Staaten mit konservativen Regierungen bessere wirtschaftliche Daten vorweisen können als Staaten mit sozialistischen Regierungen. Ob Regierungen unterschiedlicher parteipolitischer Zusammensetzung auch...

While economists have tended to focus on specific public policies when developing recommendations, the achievement of welfare objectives might depend more on the quality of policies than their content. This paper develops several measures of the qualities of policies across countries, arguing...

We analyze the ECB Governing Council's voting procedures. The literature has by now discussed numerous aspects of the rotation model but does not account for many institutional aspects of the voting procedure of the GC. Using the randomization scheme based on the multilinear extension (MLE) of...

We analyze the ECB Governing Council’s voting procedures. The literature has by now discussed numerous aspects of the rotation model but does not account for many institutional aspects of the voting procedure of the GC. Using the randomization scheme based on the multilinear extension (MLE) of...

While economists have tended to focus on specific public policies when developing recommendations, the achievement of welfare objectives might depend more on the quality of policies than their content. This paper develops several measures of the qualities of policies across countries, arguing...