Die Haeufigkeit von Naturkatastrophen hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten deutlich zugenommen. Vor diesem Hintergrund gewinnt die Frage an Bedeutung, welche oekonomischen Konsequenzen mit dem Auftreten von Naturkatastrophen verbunden sind. In der Literatur werden sowohl Argumente fuer positive als...

With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time...

Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members of the parliament. Referring to the famous study by Freeman and Medoff (1984) and considering the more recent literature we first review unions' political power at the example of the US. We conclude that trade unions have not been very...

Klappentext: Wie wirken sich politisch-institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen auf die ökonomische Leistungsfähigkeit einer Gesellschaft aus? Dieser Frage wird hier aus dem Blickwinkel der Theorie der politischen Ökonomie nachgegangen. Zunächst werden hierfür die theoretischen Grundlagen...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members in parliament. Unions have not been successful in increasing their monopoly power during the last decades in the US. Similarly, a recent study for Germany comes to the result that union members in the "Bundestag" cannot be seen as the...