Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, in wie weit polit-ökonomische Ansätze den Prozess der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union erklären können. Eine grundlegende These der Arbeit lautet wie folgt: Kritiker der Theorien rationaler Entscheidungen beziehen sich häufig auf eine sehr...

This paper has been prepared as a part of a broader Ezoneplus project that evaluates European Monetary Union (EMU) and its enlargement to prospective members in central and eastern Europe. The project is financially supported by European Commission (HPSE-CT-2001-00084). It contains the following...

This report discusses both the reshaping of certain policy areas and the socio-political repercussions an Eastward enlargement of the euro-zone may have. The focus lies on the potential for social conflict enhanced by the enlargement process and their consequences for national policy-making. The...

This Regional Input is a supplement to Ezoneplus Working Paper No. 13 on the Social Dimension of the Eastward Enlargement of the Eurozone. Within Ezoneplus the Social Dimension is a hybrid in the sense that it addresses both the reshaping of certain policies and the socio-political repercussions...

We study the determinants and productivity effects of regional transportation infrastructure investment in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. We estimate productivity effects with regional production functions for each country controlling for the potential endogeneity of public infrastructure...

This paper investigates the long-term evolution of the tax system in Germany to explain why the political left has increasingly expanded taxation to its own clientele. The paper contrasts the second half of the 19th with the second half of the 20th century to show that some of the underlying...

We show that tax competition in the EU is shaped by four interrelated institutional mechanisms: 1) Market integration, by reducing the transaction costs of cross-border tax arbitrage in the Single Market, 2) enlargement, by increasing the number and heterogeneity of states involved in intra-EU...

Das Konzept der Nettosozialleistungsquote (NSLQ) von W. Adema hat in jüngster Zeit einige zentrale Annahmen der vergleichenden Wohlfahrtsstaatenforschung erschüttert. Nicht nur die quantitative Dimension des Wohlfahrtsstaates in OECD-Ländern, sondern auch seine strukturelle Zusammensetzung...

The rise and fall of policies regulating early exit from labour markets remains enigmatic for comparative politics. Most explanations focus on structural or institutional causes. A missing source of national variation, this discussion paper argues, lies in cross-country differences in voters'...

In der Diskussion über arbeitsmarktpolitische Reformen fordern nationale Regierungen und internationale Organisationen immer stärker das Lernen von anderen Ländern. Das politikwissenschaftliche Standardmodell zur Erklärung von Reformen der Arbeitsmarktpolitik ist jedoch zumeist rein...