The rapid growth performance of the Dutch economy in terms of growth in real GDP, employment and per capita income can be traced back to the mid-1980s. This paper suggests that the growth acceleration of the Dutch economy has primarily been the result of a below-average performance during...

Modern tax systems show a mix of direct and indirect taxes. However, it is difficult if not impossible to explain actual tax systems on the ba-sis of optimality conditions. Political and institutional factors are some-times argued to explain the presence of very complex tax structures. Wepropose...

This paper introduces a general, formal treatment of dynamic constraints, i.e., constraints on the state changes that are allowed in a given state space. Such dynamic constraints can be seen as representations of "real world" constraints in a managerial context. The notions of transition,...

Using a newly developed database for 8 transition economies, this paper examines whether reforms and political freedom are important for foreign bank entry. The paper provides strong evidence that foreign bank entry positively responds to reform measures. We also find some evidence for the...

Abstract We analyse whether central bank independence (CBI) affects inflation in developing countries. For this purpose we have constructed a new data set for the turnover rate (TOR) of central bank governors for a very large sample of countries, which also covers the 1990s. We find that once...

This paper examines whether the pass-through of monetary policy measures in 6 EMU countries has become more similar over time. The countries included are: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, and the sample period is 1980-2000. We conclude that major differences in...

The industrial revolution is mostly seen as a supply side phenomenon. Ever since Gilboy stated that factors of demand may have been equally important, scholars have stressed the importance of investments and technological change. This paper re-considers Gilboy?s ideas, using the dataset of the...

Often it is maintained that economic freedom may further high levels of economic growth. This paper compares various indicators for economic freedom. It is concluded that although these measures differ somewhat in their coverage, they show similar rankings for the countries covered. Some...

We use real-time annual data on the fiscal balance, government current spending, current revenues and net capital outlays as published at a half yearly frequency in the OECD Economic Outlook for 25 OECD countries. For each fiscal year t we have a number of forecasts, a first release, and...

We argue that the finding of Hausmann et al. (2005) that a political regime change increases the probability of an economic growth acceleration is wrong and the result of an error in their database. When we correct for this error and stick to the definition of regime change of Hausmann et al.,...