This paper highlights the economic meaning of the size of the state for members of the European Union, thereby making the economic success of EU states statistically tangible. Firstly, we show in descriptive illustrations that the theoretically expected characteristics of small countries clearly...

The theoretical claim that ethnic networks encourage trade has found broad empirical support in the literature on migration, business networks and international trade. Ethnic networks matter for the exporting firm, as they exhibit the potential to lower fixed and variable cost of exporting. This...

This paper examines the involvement of the CEECs into regional and global production networks over the period 1999 to 2009. We employ a theoretically justified gravity model which incorporates the extensive margin of trade and accounts for firm heterogeneity. We first estimate the model for...

Trust in the ECB has fallen to unprecedented lows in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Up to the start of the recession in 2008, trust levels in the ECB were moderately high and trust in the ECB was not affected by business cycle variables such as growth and inflation. This changed...

This study explores a basic idea in political economy: Trading money for political influence. Our focus is at the level of international institutions, where governments may exploit their influence in one organization to gain leverage over another. In particular, we consider the lending...

There is a large body of literature analyzing the relationship between objective economic conditions and voting behavior, but there is very little evidence of how perceived economic insecurity impacts on political preferences. Using seventeen years of household panel data from the German...

Die ausufernde Verschuldung insbesondere der südeuropäischen Mitgliedstaaten stellt die Europäische Währungsunion (EWU) derzeit vor große Herausforderungen. Während über lange Zeit Einigkeit darüber herrschte, den vollständigen Erhalt der Währungsunion mit einem milliardenschweren...

We show with the aid of pooled OLS estimations that investments in improved road infrastructure have the potential to signficantly reduce transport costs. However, this result can only be clearly con rmed for industrial countries and is of primary importance for production and transportation of...

The financial crisis and the debt crisis in Europe lead to pronounced swings of the $/€-exchange rate. The influence of this exchange rate uncertainty on exports is neither theoretically nor empirically unambiguous. Therefore, this investigation tries to find out what effect exchange rate...

This paper presents a model showing an incentive for a group of people to vote for higher tuition fees, even if these fees have no quality effect. The incentive is based on a non-monetary influence on utility, namely the social status or prestige of graduating. The basic assumption is that the...