The nexus between income and happiness is very much disputed. Many cross-sectional studies seem to be in support of a positive relationship. Yet, the failure of most studies to find a similar link between increases in income through time and happiness in developed countries of the western...

Traditional Heckscher-Ohlin reasoning predicts that in open economies sector bias of technical change determines wages and may induce firms to lower skill ratios. Skill bias plays a minor role – at best. The paper discusses sufficient conditions for skill bias of ICT nevertheless to be a major...

According to popular belief, welfare-state arrangements will become unsustainable in face of low-cost competition from abroad. Yet, in contrast to much of the theoretical work that predicts a race-to-the-bottom, empirical studies do not seem to support the notion that globalization is...

Previous studies were plagued with considerable problems when interpreting and empirically analysing Wagner's Law. Therefore, we initially present some kind of "pure theory of government's share" for a two-person society based on the pure theory of public and private goods as originally...

Starting from the secular fact of an increasing government's share, a retrospective on Adolph Wagner's writings seems worthwhile. A leading German economist of the Bismarck era, he first formulated the famous "law of increasing state activity" for industrializing nations. After analyzing his way...

We examine whether the Samuelsonian definition of public goods can be reconciled with "Wagner's Law", that is, public expenditures outpacing economic growth. While both predominantly focus on the demand-side, they differ with respect to their socio-political foundations. Taking the latter into...

This paper examines the linkage between trade and the dismal state of labour markets in Europe. On the face of superficial evidence, the nexus is weak and is overshadowed by more compelling evidence of skill-biased technical change. Yet a complete dismissal of globalization is inconsistent with...

The US deficit on current account is frequently considered to be a problem of the US. A recently published paper by BATRA and BELADI [1996] is a case in point. By drawing on a revealed preference framework they claim that it might be better for the US to impose trade restrictions in order to...

This paper proposes a model in which the removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility is associated with endogenous fragmentation of the value-added chain. Fragmentation is the outcome of cost competition--the profit-maximizing choice of cost structure by monopolistically competitive firms....