Andreas Freytag

• Dr. rer.pol.
• Professor (Full) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Shortly before the federal elections in February 2025, the Federal Republic of Germany is facing one of the worst economic crises in its history. In this article, we outline the broad lines of a comprehensive economic policy reform programme, drawing on findings and plans on which there is consensus in large parts of economic research and among eco...

As countries increasingly adopt due diligence legislation to promote human rights, labor standards, and environmental sustainability in global value chains, a complex dilemma arises. While these laws commendably aim to address moral and political issues in international trade, they may also impose significant costs on companies, potentially disince...

The past decade has witnessed an increase in populist movements across the world. Some of those movements have gained strong political support and formed populist governments promising new sets of economic and fiscal policies. This raises the pertinent policy question: how do such populist governments influence fiscal policy outcomes? We approach t...

This study examines the contingency and threshold effects of economic freedom in the economic globalisation (EG) and inclusive green growth (IGG) relationship. To this end, we apply the fixed-effects generalized method of moments with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors estimator to macro data for the period 2008–2020 for 22 selected African countries....

Central bank independence has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of modern monetary policy. According to this view, the main role of independent central banks is to maintain price stability through the adjustment of short-term interest rates. Reconsidering Central Bank Independence argues that the global financial crisis has undermined c...

Chapter 7 takes an Olsonian perspective. We ask the question of what drove central bank balance sheet policies in democracies. This development is understood from the perspective of Mancur Olson’s ground-breaking theory of the ‘rise and decline of nations’ which accounts for the increasing difficulty to reform as distributional coalitions impose th...

Central bank independence has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of modern monetary policy. According to this view, the main role of independent central banks is to maintain price stability through the adjustment of short-term interest rates. Reconsidering Central Bank Independence argues that the global financial crisis has undermined c...

Central bank independence has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of modern monetary policy. According to this view, the main role of independent central banks is to maintain price stability through the adjustment of short-term interest rates. Reconsidering Central Bank Independence argues that the global financial crisis has undermined c...

In the final Chapter 9 we discuss the latest reactions of central banks to the rise of inflation, which can be interpreted as an attempt to safeguard their independence against governments. We consequently argue for a return to a division of labour in line with the Tinbergen-rule of economic policy, which can be translated as: one objective, one in...

Central bank independence has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of modern monetary policy. According to this view, the main role of independent central banks is to maintain price stability through the adjustment of short-term interest rates. Reconsidering Central Bank Independence argues that the global financial crisis has undermined c...

Central bank independence has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of modern monetary policy. According to this view, the main role of independent central banks is to maintain price stability through the adjustment of short-term interest rates. Reconsidering Central Bank Independence argues that the global financial crisis has undermined c...

In Chapter 2, we briefly discuss causes and consequences of inflation to lay the foundation for a detailed analysis of the relation between monetary policy and other policy fields

Chapter 4 is dedicated to the more recent history of monetary policy in the period labelled Great Moderation. We focus on the Federal Reserve Board (Fed), the Bank of England (BoE) the Bundesbank and its successor, the European Central Bank as well as on the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), which offers an interesting and contrasting perspective.

This is followed by a more general analysis of balance sheet operations of central banks against the background of CBI in Chapter 6.

International economic engagement has been increasingly framed in terms of liberal democratic values. Specifically, Chinese aid has been at the center of this debate. Since Chinese aid comes with “no strings attached,” a popular narrative is that Chinese aid poses a challenge to conditional aid, thus weakening democracy promotion. This study aims t...

Zusammenfassung Vor allem bei Vorliegen eines Marktversagens ist ein staatlicher Eingriff nötig und gerechtfertigt. Dieser manifestiert sich in einer Vielzahl von Regeln und Gesetzen, die das Handeln von Marktakteuren einschränken. Die Anzahl der neu eingeführten Gesetze und Vorschriften in Deutschland ist konstant hoch. Nicht immer sind die Reguli...

Although Africa is heavily affected by the Covid 19 crisis, the recent positive development seems to be sustainable. The governance structure continues to improve, and economic recovery and a continuation of the growth path are expected in 2021 and beyond. The federal government can support this process with a stronger focus on economic development...

The issue of domestic security has become increasingly complex over the past decades. As there is an increasing overlap between private and public provision of security, the question of how to allocate responsibility for security between the public sphere (state) and the private sphere has become important. Concepts that can provide both clarity an...

Growing pressure on governments to legislate for value-based trade in liberal democracies means that supply chain due diligence legislation has proliferated in recent years. Such legislation increases the obligations of businesses to ensure high standards in human rights and the environment across their international supply chains. In this policy b...

In this paper we examine the interrelatedness between regime types of democracy and non-democracy and poverty reduction. The liberal international order and democratic principles have been challenged by the populace's general discontent in recent years, while the reduction of poverty is a central goal of the global development agenda as embodied by...

The rules-based Multilateral Trading System (MTS) is in need of reforms. Reasons include the consensus principle leading to stuck negotiations as well as bilaterals and plurilaterals; and the WTO DSM stalemate hindering speedy resolution of trade frictions. To improve the WTO’s effectiveness, we suggest a hierarchical framework for plurilaterals to...

We empirically analyze to what extent economic freedom can explain the size and development of the shadow economy in OECD and other European countries. We econometrically examine the relation between a change of the overall index of economic freedom and the change of the shadow economy. We undertake an econometric panel estimation of 141 countries...

Hunting and its impacts on wildlife are typically studied regionally, with a particular focus on the Global South. Hunting can, however, also undermine rewilding efforts or threaten wildlife in the Global North. Little is known about how hunting manifests under varying socioeconomic and ecological contexts across the Global South and North. Herein,...

Protected area (PA) performance is thought to depend on effective conservation management and favourable socio-economic context. However, increasing evidence of continued biodiversity decline within PAs raises the question of whether fundamental ecological and socio-economic constraints might actually affect PA effectiveness. Here we quantify how t...

Media freedom is important not only for the quality of life in a country, but also for its investment climate, as a free press is essential for holding politicians accountable. This is the first global study of how coups affect media freedom. We argue that the effect of a coup should depend on whether it is successful, whether the targeted country...

Reconciling conservation and socioeconomic development goals is key to sustainability but remains a source of fierce debate. Protected areas (PAs) are believed to play an essential role in achieving these seemingly conflicting goals. Yet, there is limited evidence as to whether PAs are actually achieving the two goals simultaneously. Here, we inves...

In this paper we examine the interrelatedness between regime types of democ- racy and non-democracy and poverty reduction. The liberal international order and democratic principles have been challenged by the populace’s general dis- content in recent years, while the reduction of poverty is a central goal of the global development agenda as embodie...

In recent years, the challenge of industrial subsidies distorting global trade has moved to the forefront of international trade debates, including G20 discussions of World Trade Organization (WTO) reform. It is implicitly assumed that subsidies benefit the domestic economy of the subsidizing country and harm foreign competitors by tilting the play...

Concerns about socially uneven progress and inequality have regained public attention (including that of many populist politicians). The purpose of this paper is to identify the economic policies as well as economic factors that facilitate inclu- sive development. This paper is a first attempt to empirically estimate the drivers of inclusive develo...

Dieser Beitrag betrachtet der Bedeutung der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft für die Außenwirtschaft. Wir stellen zunächst – sozusagen zur Erinnerung – die Grundzüge der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft dar; im Fokus steht hier bereits die außenwirtschaftliche Dimension und die Einbindung Deutschlands in die internationale Ordnung. Anschließend wird dargelegt, wie...

Das neoklassische Paradigma weist einen hohen Erklärungsgehalt für die globale Arbeitsteilung und ihre Wirkungen auf. Die neoklassische Analyse erlaubt es, Aussagen darüber zu treffen, wie internationale Produktions- und Konsummuster zustande kommen und unter welchen Bedingungen solche Muster geändert werden können. Allerdings haben Kritiker immer...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is at an impasse regarding the resolution of tensions surrounding the issue of subsidies. The weak implementation and surveillance of WTO disciplines is attributable to the lack of notifications by WTO members. Currently, major members are developing plurilateral initiatives to deal with the perceived unfair appli...

The paper argues that the level of public spending on health varies according to the type of political regime in a country. A simple political economic model is employed to analyse the rationale of policy makers when implementing healthcare policy. The theory of dictatorship as described by Wintrobe (1990, 1998, 2001) is used to differentiate betwe...

The current discussion about the sustainability and transparency of supply chains is characterized by conflicting positions. Whereas there is a widespread consensus that sustainable behavior of German companies in supply chains is necessary, the discussion about appropriate policy measures to enforce sustainability is still ongoing fiercely. The so...

In a highly integrated world, an emerging economy such as South Africa cannot insulate itself from crisis. It can, however, strengthen those forces that mitigate external shocks. We develop an analytical framework to study the transmission mechanisms of a global crisis to an individual economy and then analyse how the South African economy was affe...

Security is often regarded as a good to be provided by the state. However, in practice we rather observe a combination of governmental and private responsibilities. From an institutional economics perspective this paper intends to reasonably locate the responsibility for security of the state, of private households and private companies, and of pri...

The right-wing party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) had some electoral successes recently, including in the 2019 state election in Thuringia. This paper analyses this result from a political economy perspective. For this purpose, we first demonstrate that the definition of right-wing populist parties can be applied to the AfD in Thuringia and ou...

Subsidization by states of their domestic industries to gain competitive advantage abroad is a perennial topic in international trade discussions. As the world moves into a multipolar environment and China rises in economic prominence, the rules governing subsidies, particularly to the industrial sector, are in the spotlight. The politics of reform...

The multilateral trading system is on the verge of a crisis arising from, among others, the dysfunction of the WTO as a forum for trade liberalization and trade related rule-making. The G20 should tackle with this challenge in a proactive and innovative manner by reinvigorating the WTO as a forum for negotiation.

Economic globalization has increasingly affected countries across the world, through participation in global value chains (GVCs) and helping to lift over one billion human beings out of extreme poverty since 1990. However, there are still too many people living in poverty, even in rich countries, and so concerns over exclusion of certain groups fro...

After the introduction of the HIPC Initiative in the early 2000s, indebted LICs had to show a decent governance performance before their debts were forgiven. We discuss the hypothesis that during the follow-up initiatives debt relief decisions refrained from this policy. We test different political economy theories by applying dynamic panel models...

In der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung wird weithin davon ausgegangen, dass der Staat für die Sicherheit zuständig ist. In der Praxis aber beobachtet man eine Kombination aus staatlicher und privater Sicherheitsverantwortung. In dem vorliegenden Beitrag wird aus ordnungsökonomischer Perspektive eine normative Begründung für die Verantwortungszuweisung zwi...

Media freedom is important not only for the quality of life in a country, but also for its investment climate, as a free press is essential for holding politicians accountable. This is the first global study of how coups affect media freedom. We argue that the effect of a coup should depend on whether it is successful, whether the targeted country...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) have a history of coexistence, competition, and cooperation since their 1944 start. Yet their relationship has had many organizational failures and fewer clear successes. Mounting criticisms catalyzed the 2000 Meltzer Report, designed to redefine the relationship between these Bre...

The paper analyses the effects of monetary policy crisis management of the European Central Bank on the economic order of Germany. It is argued that in post-war Europe the German social market economy as designed by Eucken (1952) and Müller-Armack (1966) has been a core element of growth, welfare, social cohesion and political stability in Germany...

Afrika war lange Jahre zugleich der vernachlässigte und der dunkle Kontinent. Die wirtschaftlichen Aussichten wurden auch und gerade in Deutschland immer gering eingeschätzt, der afrikanische Markt erscheint deutschen Exporteuren offenbar nicht attraktiv zu sein. Nur wenige deutsche Unternehmen engagieren sich dort, obwohl es einen langandauernden...

Sectoral linkages of financial services of the Nigerian and Kenyan economies are evaluated by means of an input–output analysis for 2007, 2009 and 2011. Backward linkages, forward linkages, multiplier effects and variation indices for the financial services sectors are determined. Due to the increasing importance of mobile money, we additionally in...

Debt relief has been an instrument of development cooperation for almost 50 years. Its track record is mixed at best, and its drivers were mainly political during its practice. However, in the early 2000s, the HIPC Initiative increased the economic rationality remarkably, because LDCs had to deliver before they were relieved from their debt. Since...

Anecdotal evidence suggests that journalists and bureaucrats in some countries are killed when they try to blow the whistle on corruption. We demonstrate in a simple game-theoretical model how murders can serve as an enforcer of corrupt deals under certain regime assumptions. Testing the main implications in an unbalanced panel of 179 countries obs...

The countries comprising the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) are currently not very integrated into global value chains (GVCs), potentially missing out on important development opportunities. Accordingly, we explore high level options for promoting their integration. Given East Asia's spectacular success with integrating into GVCs, we first a...

This article contributes to research on the geographic origin of open source software (OSS) developers by analyzing the geographic allocation of active OSS developers and OSS activities. Based on data from the SourceForge Research Data Archive, the authors exploit information about developers’ IP address, email address, and indicated time-zone. Thi...

arge current account imbalances are perceived to be a macroeconomic risk. Consequently a reversal (especially of a deficit) is often regarded as good in itself, and is frequently pursued as a policy objective or as part of reform programme. This perception is surprising in light of the intertemporal approach to the balance of payments, where intern...

Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between monetary commitment to rules and price stability is relatively weak. We discuss likely causes for this weak link and argue that monetary commitment is not necessarily credible by itself without adequate polic...

We develop a methodology based on two important criteria - sensitivity in delivery time and value-to-weight ratio - to classify air cargo products. The classification is applied to evaluate the trade integration in Southern Africa since air cargo is a valuable option to overcome trade barriers associated with poor land transport infrastructure and...

Zusammenfassung Im Zusammenhang mit der europäischen Schuldenkrise wird in der öffentlichen Debatte die Möglichkeit einer stärkeren Vergemeinschaftung der Finanzpolitiken zur Sicherung des Euro als Gemeinschaftswährung angeführt. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht, inwiefern ein derartiger Schritt aus ordnungsökonomischer Sicht ein geeignetes Mitte...

A wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) was observed in the North American and European energy utilities market. We analyze the impact of these M&A transactions on market power, studying 139 takeovers of energy utilities by applying event study methodology. Stock price reactions of acquiring and target firms as well as of their competitors are use...

Domestic savings are an important prerequisite for capital formation and growth. In this paper we analyze a new channel through which institutions influence aggregate savings and economic development. Whereas research in the field of savings decisions concentrates largely on the level of the individual, the literature on institutions and growth as...

We discuss competition policy issues of vertical integration in internetbased two-sided markets against the background of the Google antitrust allegations. Network effects and economics of scale often lead to dominating companies, which are integrated over several markets. This implies efficiency gains but creates barriers to entry. Where entrants...

Viewing individual contributions as investments in emission reduction we rely on the familiar linear public goods-game to set global reduction targets which, if missed, imply that all payoffs are destroyed with a certain probability. Regulation by milestones does not only impose a final reduction target but also intermediate ones. In our leading ex...

We analyze the impact of institutional and cultural factors on the supply side of open source software (OSS). OSS is a privately provided public good: it is marked by free access to the software and its source code, and is developed in a public, collaborative manner by thousands of volunteers as well as profit-seeking firms. Our cross-country study...

The India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) established in 2003 brings together three like-minded, democratic, market economies of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic character, sharing a broadly similar economic, political and development situation. At the time of its formation IBSA was widely regarded as representing a novel form of Sout...

This article contributes to research on the geographic origin of open source software (OSS) developers by analyzing the geographic allocation of active OSS developers and OSS activities. Based on data from the SourceForge Research Data Archive, the authors exploit information about developers’ IP address, email address, and indicated time-zone. Thi...

In recent years sub-Saharan Africa, notwithstanding the global financial crisis, has increased its share in global trade and investment flows. This has led to an appreciable improvement in development levels, albeit off a small base. However, these patterns are still dominated by commodity flows and investment, and remain marginal on the global sta...

In this paper we develop a methodology which is based on two important criteria -sensitivity in delivery time and value-to-weight ratio – to classify products relevant for air transport. Detailed trade data by mode of transport are used to check the loading of an average airplane between South Africa and the European Union. The product classificati...

We analyze whether biodiversity is enhancing the development process in developing countries (DCs) via increasing tourism receipts in a trade based endogenous growth framework. The underlying assumption is that a rich biodiversity - only if used sustainably - provides a comparative advantage in tourism for most DCs. The main empirical findings are...

We apply matching estimators to the large-scale British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set to estimate the impact of volunteering on subjective well-being. We take into account personality traits that could jointly determine volunteering behaviour and subjective well-being. We find that the impact of regular volunteering on subjective well-bein...