Inflation and Unemployment In EMU and the United States. ACES Working Papers No. 10, 2008

The original purpose of this paper was to see why the Phillips Curve numbers seem to be so much worse for the EMU countries than the United States since EMU was began operation in 1990. The problem is that there is no evidence of a Phillips curve relationship in EMU or in the United States during this seventeen year period. As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, it just is not there. In about half the years unemployment and inflation moved in the opposite direction, as Phillips would predict, but in other half of the years they moved in the same direction. This may be a matter of time lags, with unemployment lagging inflation, but it seems clear that the Phillips curve is a poor tool for explaining these year to year outcomes in Europe or the United States.

The Legal Construction of Membership: Nationality Law in Germany and the United States. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers No. 00.5, 2000

The argument of this paper is that several empirical puzzles in the citizenship literature are rooted in the failure to distinguish between the mainly legal concept of nationality and the broader, political concept of citizenship. Using this distinction, the paper analysis the evolution of German and American nationality laws over the last 200 years. The historical development of both legal structures shows strong communalities. With the emergence of the modern system of nation states, the attribution of nationality to newborn children is ascribed either via the principle of descent or place of birth. With regard to the naturalization of adults, there is an increasing ethnization of law, which means that the increasing complexities of naturalization criteria are more and more structured along ethnic ideas. Although every nation building process shows some elements of ethnic self-description, it is difficult to use the legal principles of ius sanguinis and ius soli as indicators of ethnic or non-ethnic modes of community building.