Bücher der Reihe ZEW Economic Studies

Proceedings of an International Conference held at Stuttgart, Germany, July 27-28, 1999

Offers an empirical analysis of the determinants of changes in the distribution of expenditure and revenue-raising powers among fiscal tiers in OECD countries. Using an indicator of fiscal decentralisation, which accounts for subnational decision-making autonomy, common decentralisation trends are investigated.

Competition policy is an integral and prominent part of economic policy-making in the European Union. More precisely, the goal of EU competition policy is "to defend and develop effective competition in the common market" (European Commission, 2000: 7).

Foreign exchange intervention is frequently being used by central banks in countries which have a floating exchange rate.

Empirical measurement of impacts of active labour market programmes has started to become a central task of economic researchers. The empirical part provides the reader with econometric evaluations of active labour market programmes in Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Slovak Republic and Sweden.

Our small book presents areport which has been prepared in the year 2000 for the Taxation and Custorns Union Directorate General of the European Commission, under contract no.

Looking back over the last decade it can be said with some justification that sig nificant progress has been achieved on the way towards fully integrated financial markets in Europe.

In January 2005, the German government enacted a substantial reform of the welfare system, the so-called "Hartz IV reform". It investigates whether a centralized or decentralized organization of welfare administration is more successful to integrate welfare recipients into employment.

Focusing on the ongoing integration process in the euro area and the EU, it analyses the integration process that has taken place since the 1980s and which is marked by the advent of the euro and the substantial enlargement that resulted from the accession of 12 new Member States in East and Southern Europe.

As the residential buildings sector accounts for around 30 percent of the final energy demand in Germany, this sector is increasingly becoming the focus of public attention with regard to climate change.

Over the past fifteen years, the optimal enforcement of EU competition law has become a major concern. This book contains a unique collection of articles by lawyers and economists on current issues in the public and private enforcement of competition law. Public enforcement has been strengthened in numerous ways ¿ for example, through the introduction of a leniency programme and a substantial increase in fines for competition law violations. At the same time the EU Commission has been promoting private enforcement ¿ for example, by developing a legal framework that grants victims of EU antitrust law infringements access to compensation.The contributions in this book address a range of topics in the area of competition law enforcement, including the role of fines and leniency programmes in public enforcement; access to evidence and the quantification of damages in private enforcement; and the interaction between public and private enforcement of competition law in Europe.

As the Kyoto conference of the parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change once again underscored, man-made climate change has become one of the major challenges to our generation and many generations to come.

Gaining insights into the German innovation system and the institutional framework is as important to policy making as is data on the endowment of the German economy with factors fostering innovation and their recent development.

subsequent adoption of an innovation design preferred in the lead market by other countries, can be put down to the special market context in the lead market.

Innovation-oriented environmental regulation is extremely attractive for policy planners and decision makers, since it is expected that innovations can cut costs of environmental measures and overcome existing trade-offs between economic and ecological goals.

It is dealt with disparities in employment growth, unemployment, and wages between regional labor markets in Germany. The book enables to assess our current understanding of the role of locational issues in causing those disparities, and thus to understand the basic justification of regional policy.

Empirical and theoretical evidence on the German service sector is inversely related to its growing overall importance for the entire economy.

ZhongXiang Zhang (East-West Center, Honolulu) uses a global model based on marginal abatement cost curves for 12 world regions to estimate the contributions of the three flexibility mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, i.

Sustainable development, climate policy, biodiversity conservation - all these represent flash points at the intersection of environmental science, economics, and public policy.

In its Annual Report 2003/2004, the German Council of Economic Experts launched a dual income tax as an option for a fundamental tax reform in Germany. With regard to the latter, conceptual problems of tax law and of tax administration were to be addressed as well as possible transitional problems when implementing a dual income tax.

A synthesis of two international policy initiatives: climate protection agreements and global trade liberalisation agreements. The text provides guidelines on efficient strategies for climate change mitigation.

There is now a certain tradition of Anglo-German comparative research on new technology-based firms (NTBFs). Two of the most influential studies in this area have both been sponsored by the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of In dustrial Society (AGF).

Using a data set of German corporations this book examines three topics in corporate governance: the frequency, causes, and consequences of control transfers; the determinants of acquisition and failure; and the role of corporate governance and market discipline for productivity growth.

In this book the relation between the characteristics of investors' preferences and expectations and equilibrium asset price processes are analysed.

This text provides an integrated analysis of the implications for the energy system from the need to adapt to meet climate change targets and analyzes the role of improving energy technologies for the world and the EU markets.

The major challenge is how to realize these reduction goals with minimum costs without generating new distributional and social difficulties. The book analyses the macroeconomic structural and distributional impacts of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies for the EU and the member states.

Most governments in today's market economies spend significant sums of money on labour market programmes.

In spite of the widespread use of the concept of potential output in economic theory and empirical applications as well as in economic policy debates, the historical background and the assumptions inherent to this concept are rarely made transparent, let alone critically questioned.

In the presence of a skill bias in labor demand, which increases the relative de mand for more highly skilled labor over time, there only seems to exist the choice between higher wage inequality or higher unemployment rates.