In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist es bislang nicht zu einem durchgreifenden Abbau von Subventionen gekommen, obwohl die gesamtwirtschaftlichen Vorteile eines solchen Abbaus vielfach nachgewiesen sind. Ein wichtiges Hindernis ist darin zu sehen, daß bei einer substantiellen Rückführung von...

Does official aid pave the road for private foreign investment or does it suffocate private initiative by diverting resources towards unproductive activities? In this paper we explore this question using data for a large number of developing and emerging economies. Controlling for countries?...

German wind power development is a technological success story but has involved very high subsidies. Germany was a latecomer in wind power but specific political conditions in the late 1980s and early 1990s allowed the implementation of the feed in tariff regime which has characterised Germany...

One of the most prominent instruments of regional policy is to foster education and human capital formation in economically lagging regions. However, regional policy of this type can actually hurt instead of help the poor areas. The reason is that individual geographical mobility increases with...

This paper analyses in the framework of a 2-region economic geography model the impact of transfers on agglomeration of economic activity. Two main results can be derived: First, subsidies to the activity of firms are more efficient to avoid agglomeration than subsidies to consumers (social...

How can long-term unemployment be reduced by policy measures of the government? In this paper a growth-matching-model is developed, in which the unemployment pool consists of heterogeneous unemployed workers, short-term and long-term unemployed, and with an endogenous skill-depreciation of the...

In this paper we present results of an experimental study on the performance of three mechanisms which are designed to deal with non-point source pollution : collective fining, random fining, and a tax-subsidy scheme. Our results show that collective and random fining schemes do not induce the...

We study the impact of learning-by-doing with spillovers in competitive markets with free market entry. Within a two period model, we consider first the case where fixed costs are incurred only once, and entry is once and for all. In the second case fixed costs are incurred in each period, and...

This paper develops a model of the WTO dispute settlement process (DSP) to study the recent proposal by legal scholars to subsidize litigation costs. The high cost of litigation, so the argument, is a major obstacle for developing countries to using the DSP to enforce developed countries?...