Begünstigt das geplante Steuerabkommen zwischen Deutschland und der Schweiz Steuerhinterzieher und sollte besser nachverhandelt werden? Oder führt das Abkommen zu größerer Steuergerechtigkeit? Charles B. Blankart, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und Universität Luzern, zeigt die beiden...

This paper asks whether rating agencies played a passive role or were an active driving force during Europe's sovereign debt crisis. We address this by estimating relationships between sovereign debt ratings and macroeconomic and structural variables. We then use these equ-ations to decompose...

Competence behind sovereign ratings is crucial, given that the government bond market may be vulnerable to multiple equilibria and self-fulfilling prophecies. With this in mind, this paper reviews and scrutinises official Standard & Poor's publications that address key issues surrounding the...

The paper surveys political macroeconomics, covering its development from Rogoff's conservative central banker to the most recent discussions of monetary policy and institutional design. Topics include the inflation-stabilization trade-off, central bank independence with escape clauses and...

The paper sets out to describe and compare economics enrolment and graduation trends in the United States, Germany and Switzerland. Severe downturns are observed in all three countries at least since the beginning of this decade. This motivates a discussion of possible causes and remedial...