Alerted by the dramatic mortality increase in Russia after the onset of transition, and inspired by Sen (1997) to interpret mortality as an indicator of economic performance, mortality data is used as the benchmark, by which to judge the success or failure of transition in Central and Eastern...

This paper presents a critical assessment of the widely discussed concept of Islamic Economics. The two different interpretations of Islamic economics as the study of the functioning of an interest-free economy and the validity of moral values in the economy are discussed. It is shown that none...

Recent theoretical advances in consumption theory suggest that there may exist predictable consumption surges which, if not taken sufficiently into account in forecasting, may lead to predictable forecast errors. We use this insight to identify economic variables that might help improve the...

Das Papier untersucht die Rolle von Frühindikatoren bei der Erstellung von Konjunkturprognosen. Gegenstand der Analyse sind die Fragen: Welche Kriterien sollten Frühindikatoren generell erfüllen bzw. was sollten Frühindikatoren leisten? Inwieweit erfüllen die gängigen Indikatoren diese...