This paper explores the determinants of stagflation. Three measures are proposed that gauge both the occurrence and the strength of stagflation. We investigate the empirical determinants of these measures, accounting for a range of theoretical hypotheses that have been discussed since the...

Germany has experienced tremendous growth rates in the aftermath of World War II. Since the early 1970s, growth rates declined and settled down at a more or less constant rate of 2 percent per year, only to experience a renewed negative trend around the early 2000s. We investigate the evolution...

We study the effect of entrepreneurship on economic growth. First, we illustrate that entrepreneurship affects the investment decision in horizontal and vertical innovations within endogenous growth models. As a direct consequence, the level of entrepreneurship exerts significant growth stimuli....

What are the causes of social mobility in a society? Whereas this question is of great interest for both researchers and policymakers, empirical studies concerning cross-country evidence usually suffer from small sample biases as intergenerational income elasticities are only available for a...

Stagflation has decayed the world economy during the 1970s and the early 1980s. Recent empirical studies suggest that particularly the oil crises of 1973 and 1979 led to these high stagflationary periods. However, there are still some questions unanswered: is stagflation still a problem in the...

Throughout the world, strong dispersions of both regional and national unemployment rates can be observed. The economic theory has developed various explanations on how this differences occur. Corresponding models mainly aim at institutional and political framework, insider effects, efficiency...

An important question in the process of European integration concerns the best institutional level for stabilization policies. The theory of fiscal federalism gives criteria for evaluating if fiscal stabilization policies should take place on a centralized or on a decentralized level. This paper...

Real Wage Rigidities, Fiscal Policy, and the Stability of EMU in the Transition Phase. - EMU will start with eleven member countries as scheduled on January 1, 1999. The paper shows that the primacy of politics over economics in this decision could have serious consequences concerning the...