This article reviews evidence from four international student achievement tests on the effects on student performance of competition from privately managed schools, schools’ freedom to make autonomous decisions, and accountability introduced by external exit exams. The multivariate...

We compare the behavior of groups and individuals in a two-person trust game. The first mover in this game, the sender, receives an endowment and can send any part of it to the responder; the amount sent is tripled, and the responder can then return to the sender any portion of the tripled sum....

Consumer bankruptcy regulation in the United States as well as in many other countries allow consumers to petition for a partial debt discharge. Usually, a debt release is possible when the debtor behaves in the creditors’ best interest and after filing for bankruptcy signs over her entire...

Germany is the laggard of Europe, yet the country is world champion in merchandise exports. The paper tries to solve this theoretical and empirical puzzle by diagnosing a ’pathological export boom’and a ’bazaar effect’. Excessively high wages defended by unions and the welfare state...

This paper analyses the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax or location subsidy in a model with three active countries, one of which is not part of the union, and a globally mobile firm. We show that regional coordination can lead to two types of welfare gain. First, for investments...

In the European Union and in many federal and non-federal countries, the central government pays subsidies to poor regions. These subsidies are often seen as a redistributive measure which comes at the cost of an efficiency loss. This paper develops an economic rationale for regional policy...

This article analyzes the question whether money demand in the euro area underwent a structural change in the end of 2001 when M3 money growth started to considerably overshoot the reference value set by the European Central Bank. It is found that conventional specifications of money demand have...