In this paper we investigate the effects of EU enlargement on price convergence. The internal market is expected to boost integration and increase efficiency and welfare through a convergence of prices in product markets. Two principal drivers are crucial to explain price developments. On the...

This paper analyzes the response of the European stock markets to the monetary policy shocks by the European Central Bank using the heteroskedasticity based approach of Rigobon (2003). We find that monetary policy tightening has a heterogeneous impact on the Euro Area sectors on the day the...

The economic literature to date is underestimating the importance of regional price level differences. Only in the form of "rent indices" are these differences considered in relation to overall quality of life. As experimental estimates by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban...

Das Papier zeigt, dass die seit Jahrzehnten andauernde Klagen wissenschaftlich tätiger Ökonomen,dass Öffentlichkeit und Politik nicht genug auf Ergebnisse der ökonomischen Forschung hören,zumindest für Deutschland im Quervergleich zu anderen Wissenschaften in Bezug auf das...

A draft of a reform towards "socially bounded competition" within the health care system indicates, first of all, that several areas of such an insurance system would have to be regulated by the state. Such a reform is much more complicated than text book models or the proposals of various...

In Germany the foreign born population is made up of foreigners and so called ”ethnic Germans” who migrated from eastern European countries to Germany. While the first group is confronted with problems arising from the typical German concept of ethnicity and citizenship, the latter are...

This paper presents two new tools for the identification of faking interviewers in surveys. One method is based on Benford's Law, and the other exploits the empirical observation that fakers most often produce answers with less variability than could be expected from the whole survey. We focus...