ZEW Discussion Papers

The paper investigates the business cycle relationships between the EU-15, the EU-11, as well as the EU-core countries for the period 1971 to 1997. Emphasis is put on the question whether there is a…

Capital mobility is helpful to cope with the loss of adjustment instruments in EMU. High capital mobility in the sense of Feldstein and Horioka (FH) can limit the negative consequences of shocks affecting the…

In the paper we analyse the question whether interest rate policies and / or nominal as well as real exchange rate changes served as a national policy instrument in the past to either protect one country from…

Since the start of EMU national fiscal policy in the Eurozone can be conducted almost without paying any attention to consequences for the exchange rate. This might lower fiscal discipline. In order to shed…

Within the economic profession, it is a widely held view that the fiscal criteria of the Maastricht treaty are arbitrary numbers without economic foundation. Much of this criticism seems to overlook an important…

While the potential merits of the German apprenticeship training system seem to be fairly well documented, relatively little is known about those youths who, at one point or another, do not follow the usual…

This paper builds on the repeatedly documented empirical observation that flows of international patent applications are closely related to international trade relationships. In the first part of this paper we…