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This volume addresses the attractiveness of financial centers with a primary focus on the mutual fund industry. It uses different empirical analysis approaches in an attempt to disentangle the reasons for location attractiveness and in order to identify its influence on fund pricing.

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.

This book offers a comprehensive empirical analysis of continuing vocational training in Germany. Wage and productivity effects of training are analyzed, explicitly accounting for the heterogeneity of training participants. In addition, evidence is given on whether positive externalities of continuing training exist.

The recent development of endogenous growth theories has renewed the in terest into the sources of productivity growth of the advanced industrialized economies.

This study analyzes the international activities of British start-up companies in high-technology industries. It supports a resource-based perspective since the proxies for transaction cost-based arguments and the internationalization process theory are of limited explanatory power.

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.

The automotive industry is a major pillar of the modern global economy and one of Europe's key industries. This book sheds light on a broad range of issues - globalisation and restructuring, trade and foreign direct investment, innovation, regulation, and industry policy.

The European Commission envisages putting forward a proposal for a tax reform that would allow improving the efficiency and simplicity of the corporate income tax systems. This report assesses the impact of a Common Corporate Tax Base (CCTB) on the size of the corporate tax bases of EU companies.

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

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.

Most of the studies are part of the re search project "Working hours flexibility and employment" (Arbeitszeitjlexi bilisierung und Beschiijtigung) which was conducted at the Centre for Euro pean Economic Research (ZEW) with financial support by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

This doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University of Mannheim, was written during my employment as a research fellow at the Zentrum fiir Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research) in Mann­ heim. My work profited very much from the fruitful environment provided by the ZEW and particularly by the Department of Labour Markets, Human Resources and Social Policy. I am very grateful to my advisor, Professor Wolfgang Franz, for his support and inspiration. I am also indebted to Friedhelm Pfeiffer for encouraging me to work on the topicoftransition from unemployment to self-employment. Also, Part IIIof this study gained very much from the joint work with FriedheIm Pfeiffer. Fur­ thermore, I am much obliged to Professor JosefBniderl for evaluating this disser­ tation. I would like to thank the "Forderverein Wissenschaft und Praxis am Zentrum fiir Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung e.V." for financial support of part of this study. My work also benefited from the comments and the help of numerous people other than those mentioned above. Knowing that the list of acknowledgement is incomplete, I would like to thank Professor Francois Laisney and Matthias Almus for their valuable comments on the selection models, Professor William Greene for his helpful remarks on the bivariate probit model, Professor John Ham and an anonymous referee for their very valuable comments on preliminary work of this study, and Joachim Keller, Jens Kohlberger and Yibo Ren for providing excellent research assistance. Obviously, all remaining errors are my own responsibility.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.