Abstract The European Union is characterised by large and persistent disparities across regions concerning income distribution and unemployment rates. European Structural Funds (ESF) have been raised to narrow income differences and foster employment in lagging regions. The paper describes the...

Zusammenfassung Agglomerationskräfte haben einen bedeutenden Einfluß auf den Standortwettbewerb der deutschen Bundesländer. Die reicheren Länder sind eher Monopolisten als Wettbewerber, ihr Zusammenspiel mit den ärmeren Ländern fuhrt deshalb nicht unbedingt zu mehr Effizienz. Wegen...

We derive the asymptotic distributions of degenerate <InlineEquation ID="IEq7"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$$U$$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation>- and <InlineEquation ID="IEq8"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$$V$$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation>-statistics of stationary and ergodic random variables. Statistics of these types naturally appear as approximations of test statistics. Since the limit variables are of complicated structure, typically depending on unknown...</equationsource></inlineequation></equationsource></inlineequation>

Amartya Sen argues that it is not, after all, irrational to reverse preferences when your choices are amplified by an ‘irrelevant’ alternative. He offers examples such as the agent who always picks the next-to-largest piece of cake. Given a choice between a larger and smaller piece,...

Confidence intervals for impulse responses computed from autoregressive processes are considered. A detailed analysis of the methods in current use shows that they are not very reliable in some cases. In particular, there are theoretical reasons for them to have actual coverage probabilities...