Die Studie "Ernährung und Wasser" geht der Frage nach, wie sich Angebot und Nachfrage auf den Märkten für Nahrungsmittelrohstoffe bis zum Jahr 2030 entwickeln werden. Zudem werden die historischen Entwicklungen und die zu erwartenden (Preis-)Trends für ausgewählte Nahrungsmittel analysiert....

Wer zwischen 2001 und 2002 in Schiffe investierte - auf dem Höhepunkt der Aktienmarktkrise - der reibt sich jetzt die Hände. Enorme Gewinne sind angefallen. Seit dem Beitritt der Volksrepublik China (im Folgenden stets VRC) zum allgemeinen Freihandelsabkommen der WTO - eben in jenem Jahr 2001...

Nach Definition der Brundtland-Kommission ist eine Entwicklung nachhaltig, wenn sie "den Bedürfnissen der heutigen Generation entspricht, ohne die Möglichkeiten künftiger Generationen zu gefährden, ihre eigenen Bedürfnisse zu befriedigen und ihren Lebensstil [frei] zu wählen". Diese...

This research examines variations in the diffusion of agriculture across countries and archaeological sites. The theory suggests that a society´s history of climatic shocks shaped the timing of its adoption of farming. Specifically, as long as climatic disturbances did not lead to a collapse of...

Despite the importance attributed to the effects of diversity on the stability and prosperity of nations, the origins of the uneven distribution of ethnic and cultural fragmentation across countries have been underexplored. Building on the role of deeply-rooted biogeographical forces in...

In the field of mergers and acquisitions, German and international tax law allow for several opportunities to step up a firm's assets, i.e., to revaluate the assets at fair market values. When a step-up is performed the taxpayer recognizes a taxable gain, but also obtains tax benefits in the...

We study the apparent disconnect between what countries announce to be their exchange rate regime and what they de facto implement. Even though discrepancies between announcements and de facto polices are frequent, there is a lack of understanding of actual patterns and underlying reasons. We...

We test the quantity theory of money (QTM) using a novel approach and a large new sample. We do not follow the usual approach of first differentiating the logarithm of the Cambridge equation to obtain an equation relating the growth rate of real GDP, the growth rate of money and inflation. These...

There is strong empirical evidence that countries with lower per capita income tend to have smaller trade volumes even after controlling for aggregate income. Furthermore, poorer countries do not just trade less, but have a lower number of trading partners. In this paper, I construct and...