This paper is no more than a critical note on the mismatch philosophy. Its main point is that, under empirically acceptable assumptions, all measures developed so far - and probably all measures likely to emerge from refining the mismatch tools - are bound to seriously underestimate the extent...

Seit Ende der Sechziger Jahre bemühen sich amerikanische Finanzwissenschaftler und Wohlfahrtstheoretiker um die allokative Rechtfertigung staatlicher Umverteilung. Im Zentrum des Interesses steht dabei das Konzept der Interdependenz von Nutzenfunktionen1 dessen Einführung in die konventionelle...

Until recently the concept of tax expenditures has been exclusively analyzed along traditional Pigouvian lines. Broadly speaking, the introduction of tax/subsidy-schemes was considered to be justified whenever large number externalities prevent the market from working efficiently. This approach...

The main point of this paper will be that West German unemployment in the late 1980's has a curious double character: while its genesis is largely determined by the macroeconomic events of the last two decades - two stabilization crises and one wage revolution -, its current state reveals...

By historical standards, the 1980's have been a time of high unemployment in West Germany. Not surprisingly, they have also been a boom period for theories about unemployment and policy proposals against it. This paper is an attempt in stocktaking: We shall try to sort out which of the most...

Is the wage structure too rigid? Since the mid-1970s, this question has been one of the most persistent themes of the economic policy debate in West Germany. In recent months, the question is asked with a new sense of urgency: after the political and economic unification of the country in 1990,...

From the 194O's until the late 196O's,the unchallenged ruler of the intellectual kingdom of economics was a paradigm which - for lack of a better name - we shall simply call mainstream economics. Broadly speaking, mainstream economics may be described as a well-composed menu of quite distinct...

In the last two decades, most industrialized western nations, have experienced a marked increase of government intervention in economic affairs. This peculiar historical trend is followed by a growing professional interest among economists in the impact which public expenditure and taxation may...