Unter dem Eindruck der Erfahrungen des letzten Jahrzehnts und vorher schon aufgrund theoretischer Überlegungen sind mehr und mehr Zweifel aufgekommen, ob eine finanzwirtschaftliche Nachfragesteuerung ein taugliches Mittel gegen Unterbeschäftigung ist. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, die...

Despite strongly equalized per capita revenue and similar budgetary institutions, fiscal performance is increasingly diverging across German federal states. Given that state and local governments are endowed with expenditure autonomy, this paper investigates whether the composition of...

What role can better quality of public finances play in supporting Europe's long-term economic growth prospects? This question was at the centre of the 2008 European Commission workshop on public finances. It was largely motivated by the pressures put on European economies and their budgets from...

The containment of social expenditure growth has been (and still is) a core issue of public policy in advanced industrial countries since the 1980s and has received much academic attention during that period. Among the most extensively discussed explanatory factors of social expenditure are...