This paper provides a political-economy explanation of the degree of centralization in economic policy making. To determine which policies are to be centralized, regions select representatives who then negotiate the degree of centralization and the regional cost shares of centrally decided...

Innerhalb weniger Jahrzehnte hat sich der deutsche Arbeitsmarkt vom Vorbild zum Negativbeispiel verändert. Die Erklärung wird hier im Zusammenwirken von Schocks und Institutionen gesucht. Zwar fördern Regelungen wie der Beschäftigungsschutz die Unter-nehmens-interne Anpassung; die...

The real economic effects of the considerably high appreciation in Central European Economies (CEE) are controversially disputed in the eve of the European Monetary Union (EMU) entry of several CEE economies. The Balassa-Samuelson-effect was made responsible for the expectation of higher...

A very prominent instrument of regional policy is to foster education and human capital for-mation in economically lagging regions. However, this type of regional policy might actually hurt instead of help the recipient areas. The reason is that individual geographical mobility increases with...

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...

Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy hold to a pessimistic belief in historical persistence -- they believe that Latin America has always had very high levels of inequality, suggesting it will be hard for modern social policy to create a more egalitarian society. This paper argues...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (e.g., the IMF) and a country has for optimal (conditional) reform design. The main result is that the informational advantage of the country must be strictly greater than the advantage of the multilateral in order...