Recent empirical growth literature suggests that cultural factors play a decisive role in economic development, while empirical evidence for their impact on government activity remains scant. In this paper, we conjecture based on Weber’s Protestant Ethics that ‚Protestant values’ such as...

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This paper empirically investigates the differences in the motives for raising privatization proceeds for a panel of 22 OECD countries from 1990 to 2001. We test whether privatizations can be mainly interpreted (a) as a means to foster growth, increase tax income, and relax the fiscal stance,...

This paper analyzes differences between shadow economic activities in the western and eastern part of Germany. Due to new empirical results easterners' engagement in shadow economic activities seems to be lower than the engagement of their western neighbors. How can we explain this seemingly...

In opposite to the opinion of GRAF (2007) and KOCH (2007) the economic impact of the informal sector, shadow economy, and illicit work is frequently underestimated. The entire value created in Germany is 50 to 80 % higher than estimated in the official GDP and lies between 3 and 4 trillion €....

In the context of emission trading it seems to be taken as given that people's preferences can be ignored with respect to the whole process of fixing emission targets and allocating emission permits to polluters. With this paper we want to reopen the debate on how citizens can be involved in...

This paper examines the relationships between profitability and firm size, and efficiency and firm size, based on firms in Upper Austria. There is considerable evidence suggesting that the average profitability of small enterprises exceeds that of large firms. However, productivity tends to be...

As the shadow economy is increasing in almost all OECD countries this paper analyses the theoretical reasons why people work in the shadow economy. Three approaches are presented, models of time allocation, transaction models and models of tax evasion. The major reason for a growing shadow...