We try to identify which economic factors might be responsible for the large international differences in student performance. We present time series evidence for a number of European countries which suggests that rising educational expenditures obviously did not improve student performance....

Based on Baumol’s cost-disease model, we develop two alternativemeasures of the change in the productivity of schooling. Bothproductivity measures are based on changes in the relative price ofschooling. We find that in most OECD countries the price of schoolinghas increased faster in 1970-94...

This paper studies a revenue-neutral green tax reform that substitutes energy for wage taxes in an open economy with unemployment. As long as the labour tax rate exceeds the energy tax rate, such a reform will increase employment, reduce the domestic firms’ unit cost of production and hence...

The actual mainstream view of academics emphasizes the so-called \"two-corner solution\" with either completely fixed or independently floating exchange rates. We will argue in this paper that the requirements for fixed rates are rather too restrictive to be successful. On the other hand, the...

We estimate changes in the productivity of schooling for six East Asian countries. Our productivity measure is based on changes in the relative price of schooling. A rising price of schooling relative to other labor-intensive service sectors should indicate declining relative schooling...

Germany has one of the most generous public pension and health insurance systems of the world, yet private savings are high and remain positive until old age, even for most low income households. How can we explain what we might want to term the \"German savings puzzle\"? We provide a...

Seit einigen Jahren setzen auch deutsche Unternehmen zunehmend Aktienoptionen als *\" Entlohnungsinstrument ein. Wie werden Aktienoptionen gegenwärtig steuerlich behandelt? Besteht im Zuge der Steuerreform ein steuerpolitischer Handlungsbedarf?