Macroeconomic impacts of European union membership of central and eastern European economies

This paper examines the impact of an eastern enlargement of the European Union. This is modeled as an increase in total factor productivity and a decrease in the risk premium for the central and eastern European countries (CEECs). In particular, a multicountry model of the world economy is used to assess the direct effects and spillovers of these changes. Inflation targeting for the euro zone by the European Central Bank and alternative scenarios with respect to fiscal policy behavior in the CEECs are considered. According to these simulations, productivity effects are stronger than risk premium effects, and spillovers are small.     

SLOPOL1: A macroeconomic model for Slovenia

This paper presents the specification and estimation of SLOPOL1 (Slovenian Economic Policy Model, Version 1), a macroeconometric model for Slovenia. Since Slovenia became an independent state in 1991, the available time series are very short and unreliable. In order to increase the degrees of freedom, quarterly data are used. The model contains behavioral equations for factor demand, potential gross domestic product, imports, the wage-price system, private consumption and labor supply of households, money and foreign exchange markets, and the public sector. Due to data constraints, the supply side and household consumption have not been further disaggregated. The capability of the model to reproduce the behavior of the endogenous variables in an ex post simulation can be regarded as satisfactory.Work on this model was initiated within the framework of the contract entitled "Austrian-Slovenian Cooperation for an Integrated Energy Program: Development and Implementation of a Macroeconomic Model" between the Slovenian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Verbundplan and financed by the Austrian Federal Chancellery. Later research has been supported by the Austrian Science Foundation under contract P12745-OEK and by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Economic Analysis. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Forty-Seventh International Atlantic Economic Conference, March 16–23, 1999, Vienna, Austria, and the Forty-Ninth International Atlantic Economic Conference, March 14–21, 2000, Munich, Germany. The authors are indebted to the participants in these discussions and to Tanja Cesen and Igor Strmsnik for providing data.     

An experimental test of design alternatives for the British 3G/UMTS auction

In spring 2000, the British government auctioned off licences for Third Generation mobile telecommunications services. In the preparation of the auction, two designs involving each a hybrid of an English and a sealed-bid auction were considered by the government: A discriminatory and a uniform price variant. We report an experiment on these two designs, and also compare the results to those with a pure English auction. Both hybrids are similar in efficiency, revenue differences disappear as bidders get experienced. Compared to the discriminatory format, the pure English auction induces more entry.     

Sustainability of Austrian public debt: a political economy perspective

Sustainability of Austrian public debt is investigated in the context of political objectives such as stabilizing the business cycle, increasing chances for being re-elected and implementing the ideologies of political parties. Several tests indicate that Austrian fiscal policies were sustainable in the period 1960–1974, while from 1975 on, public debt grew much more rapidly. The development of public debt in Austria seems to be driven not primarily by ideology, but by structural causes and a shift in the budgetary policy paradigm. We find some empirical evidence that governments in Austria dominated by one party run higher deficits than coalition governments. There are no indications of a political business cycle.     

Social security and retirement incentives in Austria

This paper provides an overview of the interaction between social security and retirement behavior in Austria in the decades up to the on-going reform process. The key question is, how much of the retirement behavior can be attributed to incentive effects of the pension system. We describe the labor market and retirement behavior of the elderly in Austria, survey the key features of the public pension system and finally present the results of a series of simulations aimed at assessing the retirement incentives generated by the pension system. We compute levels and accrual rates of social security wealth and implicit tax rates on continued work according to the method portrayed in Gruber and Wise [Gruber J, Wise D (1999) Social security and retirement around the world. University of Chicago Press, Chicago London]. To some extent, the sharp drop in labor force participation among the elderly must be attributed to major disincentives of the Austrian pension system; the system turns out to provide significant incentives to retire early. Past reforms have reduced the disincentives. Our results, however, show the need to further reform the public pension scheme and to reorient it stronger towards the principle of actuarial fairness.