EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of “close to balance or in surplus”. Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar­gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council....

In this paper we analyze the money demand functions of the four largest EMU countries and of the four-country (EMU-4) aggregate. We identify reasonable and stable money demand relationships for Germany, France and Spain as well as the EMU-4 aggregate. For the case of Italy, results are less...

The gross wage income distributions for different groups of taxpayers in 1998 are used to derive wage income distributions for 2001–2006. By applying alternative rules of taxation, revenues according to different tax rate structures are deduced. Introducing new tax rates in 2004 resp. in 2005...

The German banking market is notorious for its low degree of market penetration by foreign financial institutions, suggesting that markets serviced by domestic and foreign banks are segmented. This paper employs a number of tests to determine whether activities of domestic and foreign banks are...

Despite several income tax rate reductions in Germany, tax reform measures are proposed by several parties and by specific research groups. The intention is to lower marginal income tax rates substantially and at the same time to reduce or even to abolish tax expenditures. The major proposals...

The canonical new Keynesian Phillips Curve has become a standard component of models designed for monetary policy analysis. However, in the basic new Keynesian model, there is no unemployment, all variation in labor input occurs along the intensive hours margin, and the driving variable for...

Germany has had an extremely low growth performance since 1995. The paper looks at the long-run reasons for this loss of economic dynamics besides German unification: These include leaving labor idle, a declining share of investment in GDP, a weaker innovative activity, an ineffective system for...

In Great Britain several policy measures have been implemented in order to increase energy efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions. In the domestic sector, these targets can be achieved by improving space heating efficiency and, hence, decrease heating expenditures. However, before...

We use the new version of the GTAP-W model to analyze the economy-wide impacts of enhanced irrigation efficiency. The new production structure of the model, which introduces a differentiation between rainfed and irrigated crops, allows a better understanding of the use of water resources in...

In diesem Beitrag wird aufgezeigt, dass sich die Geldpolitik der Deutschen Bundesbank im Zeitraum 1991 bis 1998 gut mit Hilfe einer so genannten vorausschauenden Taylor-Regel beschreiben lässt. Die Deutsche Bundesbank stabilisierte in den 90er Jahren sowohl die Inflation als auch die...