The situation of the world economy has improved in recent months. In the industrial countries, activity picked up in the second quarter, and leading indicators point towards a subsequent further strengthening of output growth. The upturn was most pronounced in the United States and in Japan. By...

In recent months, the world economy has lost momentum partly due to the adverse impact of an increasing probability of war with Iraq. While growth decelerated in all major industrial countries, economic activity remained robust in Asian emerging market economies and in Central and Eastern...

This paper presents a positive model which shows that institutional setups on capital and labor markets might be intertwined by politicoeconomic forces. Some countries especially in continental Europe exhibit a corporatist politicoeconomic equilibrium with a sustantial protection of insiders on...