Seit mehr als 30 Jahren ist in Deutschland ein treppenf�rmiges Anwachsen der Arbeitslosigkeit zu verzeichnen. Meist wurde auf diese Entwicklung mit eher kosmetischen Reformen reagiert, die fundamentalen Ursachen wurden nicht angegangen. Diese Vorg�nge stellen die Sozialsysteme vor...

Despite the fact that policymakers often have a short-term horizon and prefer discretionary over rule bound policy, one can observe policy reform with a focus on rules and long-term orientation. Sometimes reforms are driven by crisis, sometimes they are pursued in times of relative prosperity....

Overregulation is one major obstacles to the free and innovative development of markets, even if these markets needed regulation after the privatization of a former monopolist. As a radical change of the regulatory regime could endanger it as a whole, the objective is to find a transitory regime...

A procurement contract is granted by a bureaucrat (the auctioneer) who is interested in a low price and a bribe from the provider. The optimal bids and bribes are derived based on an iid private cost assumption. In the experiment, bribes are negatively framed (betweensubjects treatment) to...

This paper analyses how the central banks role in the monetary institutional setting can affect the unification process of the overall financial supervision architecture. Using indicators of monetary commitment and central bank independence, we claim that these legal proxies show an inverse link...

We analyze the impact of institutional and cultural factors on the supply side of open source software (OSS). OSS is a privately provided public good: it is marked by free access to the software and its source code, and is developed in a public, collaborative manner by thousands of volunteers as...

Sino-European trade relations have affected Europe's bilateral comparative advantages over time. The change in bilateral trade is compared to the overall development of European trade to highlight the features of China's structural change. China is shown to be increasingly specializing in...

In this paper we empirically discuss the question whether or not debt relief in the past fifteen years has been economically rational. Analysing the determinants of debt relief our results suggest that governance quality did not play a role in the decision of creditor countries to forgive debt...

We analyse whether biodiversity can improve the economic growth of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) by increasing the receipts of tourism as one of the world biggest and fastest growing industries. The intention of our examination is to present an alternative utilization of biodiversity, rather...

Die aktuelle bildungspolitische Diskussion hat mit dem Vorschlag, Eliteuniversitäten zu schaffen, einen vorläufigen Höhepunkt erreicht. Von vielen Seiten wird hierzu Stellung bezogen. Der vorliegende Beitrag dient zum Einen zur Versachlichung der Diskussion und zum Anderen dazu, in knapp...