Elinor Ostrom: Die Verfassung der Allmende. Jenseits von Staat und Markt. - Die englische Originalausgabe dieses vieldiskutierten Buches ist schon vor 20 Jahren unter dem Titel 'Governing the commons. The evolution of institutions for collective action' bei Cambridge University Press erschienen....

We study changes in the form of government as an example of endogenously determined constitutions. For a sample of 202 countries over the period 1950-2006, we find that most changes are relatively small and roughly equally likely to be either in the direction of more parliamentarian or more...

This paper analyzes the influence of financial integration on institutional quality. We construct a dynamic political-economic model of an autocracy in which a ruling elite uses its political power to expropriate the general population. Although financial integration reduces capital costs for...

This paper studies regime dependence in macroeconomic dynamics in the U.S. using a threshold vector autoregressive model in which endogenous regime switches are triggered by the inflation rate. The model separates a high from a low inflation regime with both regimes being strongly persistent....

The paper addresses the welfare implications of conditional grants in the presence of inefficiencies in regional production. While conditional grants may set incentives for regions to reduce inefficiencies, resources are wasted in the process of grant-seeking. We provide a theoretical model to...

Sunk firing costs shelter employment and this effect is typically amplified by uncertainty due to an option value of waiting. Thus, if sunk firing costs are high, e.g. due to a employment protection legislation, and if recession related losses are with a high probability expected to be only...

Twice a year FOMC members submit forecasts for growth, unemplyoment and in ation to be published in the Humphrey-Hawkins Report to Congress. In this paper we use individual FOMC forecasts to assess whether these forecasts exhibit herding behavior, a pattern often found in private sector...

This paper studies whether the observed high correlation between monetary policy in the U.S. and the Euro area can be explained by economic fundamentals, i.e. by macroeconomic interdependence between the two regions. We show that an optimal monetary policy reaction function for the ECB that...

Regional cultural identity increases trust and facilitates interaction between native citizens ('social capital'). At the same time, it also affects non-native's migration decisions and their utility as it excludes non-native mobile workers from economic interaction within the region. Policies...

In this paper, we develop a politico-economic model to analyze the relationship between the mode of international investment and institutional quality in a non-democratic capital importing country. Foreign investors from a capital-rich North can either purchase productive assets in a...