Modern (endogenous) growth theory tells us that knowledge is crucial for the sustained growth of high-income economies. Against this background, the paper provides a survey of theoretical and empirical findings highlighting the question of how geographically limited knowledge diffusion can help...

This paper offers a comparison of government centralization in the United States and in Germany. After briefly laying out the history of federalism in both countries, we identify the instruments of centralization at work. It is argued that an initial constitutional framework of competitive...

The distribution of competencies between the different levels of a federal system may have remarkable effects on economic growth, because mainly the regions of a country contribute to national economic development. Thus, a government’s economic policy is reasonably shaped along regional lines....

In 2004 the Republic of Slovenia entered the European Union and, as a matter of principle, was guaranteed the four freedoms (free trans-national mobility of goods, services, capital and labour). From an economic viewpoint, this guarantee should provide the required institutional framework to...

The paper provides a survey of the current status of development and application of indicator systems for measuring sustainable development at the local and regional level in Germany. For this purpose, 44 indicator systems have been analyzed on the basis of different criteria. Additionally, the...