Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) is arguably the most promising theory of business ethics to date, but it is often criticized for its inability to produce substantive norms. Rather than abandoning the contractualist endeavor in business ethics altogether, we undertake to redeem it by...

Based on arguments of the `reference- dependent' theory of consumer choice we assume that a retailer's discount of a manufacturer's suggested retail price changes consumers' demand. We can show that the producer benefits from suggesting a retail price. If consumers are additionally sufficiently...

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of recently published Dutch national income statistics 1800-1913. An effort is made to identify Kondratieff waves in volume series relating to gross domestic product and expenditure. It is found that Kondratieff waves can be identified in most series....

In this paper we examine growth differences between European cities. We have used the Urban Audit, a rather new dataset from Eurostat. After clarifying the merits of this dataset as well as some of its limitations, we provide some detailed characteristics of city growth in the European Union....

Governments try to attract firms and jobs by investing in international infrastructure. We analyse this type of strategic policy competition in a three-country model of monopolistic competition. What governments compete for, is to obtain a so called ‘hub’ position. A hub is a...

The European Commission is currently drafting a proposal for a review of the EU budget, which could lead to its most significant reform to date. This paper proposes a method for restructuring the EU budget, based on a multidisciplinary approach. The insights of public sector economics, fiscal...

In April 2005 the OECD published its guidelines on the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises (S0E). Its first guideline reads that “…SOEs should not be exempt from the application of general laws and regulations… the legal and regulatory framework should allow...

Abstract We provide an explanation for why centralisation of political decision making results in overspending in some policy domains, whereas too low spending persists in others. We study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over local public goods provision. If all of the...