Am 11. und 12. Juni 2013 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht Experten zur Krisenpolitik der EZB angehört. Dabei ging es um die Frage, ob oder inwieweit die EZB durch das Outright-Monetary-Transactions-Programm (OMT) Kompetenzen beansprucht, die ihr nicht übertragen worden sind. Wir...

This paper uses extensive student-level micro databases of three international student achievement tests to estimate heterogeneity in the effect of external exit examinations on student performance along three dimensions. First, quantile regressions show that the effect tends to increase with...

The paper analyzes the implications of local and global pollution when two types of abatement activities can be undertaken. One type (e.g., use of particulate matter filters) reduces solely local pollution while the other (e.g., application of fuel saving technologies) mitigates global pollution...

The results indicated in Table 1 show that incomplete depreciation allowances reinforce the distortions in the equilibrium growth path brought about by an ideal capital income tax. A reduction in the deductible share of economic depreciation, like an increase in the tax rate, raises the current...

We provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity in 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two international TIMSS tests. Using cross-country variation in education policies and its interaction with family background at the student level,...

Although there seems to be a broad consensus among economists that purely floating or completely fixed exchange rates (the so-called corner solutions) are the only viable alternatives of exchange rate management. many countries do not behave according to this paradigm and adopt a strategy within...

This paper presents a model of educational production that tries to make sense of recent evidence on effects of institutional arrangements on student performance. In a simple principal-agent framework, students choose their learning effort to maximize their net benefits, while the government...

We consider a monopolistic supplier’s optimal choice of wholesale tariffs when downstream firms are privately informed about their retail costs. Under discriminatory pricing, downstream firms that differ in their ex ante distribution of retail costs are offered different tariffs. Under uniform...