No abstract available.

In this paper, we examine students' attitudes towards various allocation mechanisms for a scarce resource. For this purpose, we have run a survey among officers of the German military who are enrolled in different courses of study (such as economics) at the University of the German Federal Armed...

Economists praise the efficiency of the price mechanism in allocating scarce resources. Others, however, often reject it as unfair. In this study, we investigate the extent to which economists also differ from non-economists in how they value the fairness of the price system, and examine how...

There are four major challenges for housing policy in the near and midterm future: First, rents in many German conurbations have been rising significantly faster than incomes over the last five years. Though it can rightly be argued, that the suggested policies of the new German federal...

The paper analyses housing investment patterns in 127 German cities with annual data from 1990 to 2010. The empirical estimation is conducted with a panel analysis based on Tobinís Q theory, which says that any investment is a function of the Q ratio. Our marginal Q ratio captures the...

Strengthening elements of direct democracy has become a hotly debated issue especially in purely representative democracies where distrust in political institutions and policymakers has been continually growing in recent years. We develop a compensation model of interest groups seeking a...

The demographic trends in Germany will seriously impact supply and demand for public infrastructure. Significant savings for the public budgets are not expected, though. There might plausibly be fewer com-muters in an ageing and shrinking society. But as road freight transport is likely to...

The authors contend that the costs of the euro in Germany outweigh the benefits. How they determine this is interesting and controversial. But this point of view deserves a hearing.

A closer look at the developments in 35 cities across China, looking for potential regional real estate bubbles. An assessment is done about the success of the various policies and their potential negative impact on the economy and the financial system.