This paper is a thoroughly revised and extended version of an article firstly published in the anthology "Moderne Wirtschaftsgeschichte" (München: Oldenbourg) in 1996. This book is an introduction to modern economic history for historians and economists. Accordingly this paper has to two...

Many practitioners point out that the speculative profits of institutional traders arc eroded by the difficulty in gauging the price impact of their trades. In this paper. we develop a model of strategic trading where speculators face such a dilemma because of incomplete information about...

In this paper the term ‘globalisation’ means the international integration of nationally organised markets in conjunction with increasing cross-country flows of factors of production. According to this globalisation has been under way for centuries. Globalisation is not a completely...

Economic theory typically assumes that people are only interested in their own material wealth. Experimentalists have recently discovered that this assumption is not true under all circumstances. Especially in regular face to face interactions, not only the personal well-being but also the...

In recent years the market for asset backed securities (ABS) has shown a rapid growth. In an ABS transaction assets are first pooled and then securities backed by this pool are issued. In many cases, several tranches of securities differing with respect to their priority of payment are designed....

Using simple benchmark models, this paper gives an introductory analysis of three separate policy issues that relate to the taxation of multinational firms: (i) the spread of tax measures that provide discriminatory tax relief to multinational firms; (ii) the switch from the current separate...

Many contributions to the economics of religion postulate an "afterlife consumption motive." People are assumed to maximize total utility--including afterlife utility. This essay argues that the approach is unsatifactory for several reasons. First, many regularities in religious participation...

This paper argues that equal per-capita health care premia offer no systematic advantage as an instrument of financing the welfare state. Either will simultaneous changes in the tax system be necessary to compensate their redistributive effects, in which case all efficiency gains derived from a...