This paper focuses on possible economic consequences of low fertility in Europe. It summarizes a selection of papers that were presented at a conference at the University of St. Gallen in April 2008. This introduction also reviews the history of falling fertility in Europe and the literature...

Estimations of the shadow economies for 120 countries, including developing, Eastern Europe and Central Asian and high income OECD countries over 1999 to 2006 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2004/05 in 76 developing countries is 35.5%, in...

Latin American countries have lost competitiveness in world markets in comparison to China over the last two decades. The main purpose of this study is to examine the causes of this development. To this end an augmented Dornbusch-type Ricardian' model is estimated using panel data. The...

Building on the three-sector-hypothesis, the New Theory of Trade, and the New Economic Geography, we investigate the development of economic structures of European countries over the last three decades using employment data. We test for structural convergence which we analyze on the aggregate...

Ziel des vorliegenden Papiers ist es, den Einfluss makroökonomischer Größen auf die Einkommensungleichheit zu untersuchen. Auf Basis des sozio-ökonomischen Panels (SOEP) analysieren wir erstmalig diesen Zusammenhang für Deutschland. Dabei ist zu beobachten, dass die makroökonomischen...

The literature on unemployment has mostly focused on labor market issues while the impact of capital formation is largely neglected. Job-creation is often thought to be a matter of encouraging more employment on a given capital stock. In contrast, this paper explicitly deals with the long-run...

In this paper, we address the question of optimal wage and income dispersion in a growing economy. If already in the two-persons-case we have to deal with the fact of different marginal products of labor, there are two solutions in principle. Either two different wages are paid (at unanimous...

Im vorliegenden Text wird dargelegt, warum in die moderne Wirtschaft ein Wachstumszwang und Wachstumsdrang eingebaut sind. Wird eine globale minimale Wachstumsrate unterschritten, kommt es zur Krise.

The paper presents a review of theoretical concepts and empirical findings on the issue of FDI-induced spillover and crowding-effects in the Chinese economy. Against the background of the peculiar characteristics of China's FDI-inflows the paper discusses various research agendas and results. It...