This paper reconsiders the theoretical foundations of EU regional policy in economics. It begins with a discussion of the line of thought of its prevalent explanation in equilibrium economics which is focusing on market failures as its key underpinning and which is the major toolkit of...

This paper reconsiders the economic explanation of EU regional policy from an evolution- ary perspective. It contrasts the neoclassical equilibrium notions of market and government failure with the prevalent evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian and Austrian-Hayekian percep- tions. Based on this...

Current European integration very much focusses on harmonisation and convergence. This streamlining goes far beyond what is demanded by economic reasoning and turns out - as the euro crisis has demonstrated - to foster tensions among EU member states instead of promoting a flourishing common...

Die Alterung der westlichen Industrienationen führt zu einer erheblichen Belastung der Sozialversicherungssysteme. Der Autor zeigt dies am Beispiel der bundesdeutschen Rentenversicherung auf. Die ökonomische Analyse ergibt, daß die deutsche Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung (GRV) deutliche...

This cumulative dissertation contains four self-contained articles which are related to EU regional policy and its structural funds as the overall research topic. In particular, the thesis addresses the question if EU regional policy interventions can at all be scientifically justified and...

Abstract In this paper we consider the robustness to error autocorrelation of four stationarity tests. The size and power properties of these tests are investigated by simulation. Size is improved by using fixed-b critical values to account for the number of lags used in long-run variance...

In this paper we consider the KPSS test. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the statistic under the null of stationarity and under the unit root alternative under the "fixed-b" assumption that the ratio of the number of lags in the long run variance estimate to the sample size is fixed....