In this paper, the authors analyze the behavior of local governments on capital taxation when the financial choices in terms of a public good quality are done by a central planner. More specifically, they ask the question whether a local government has an interest to tax the mobile factor in...

From a pure welfare economic viewpoint, there is no contradiction between a deepening and a widening of the EU. However, the analysis in this paper shows that the factual degree of deepening efforts within the EU by far exceeds the economically optimal one. Above all, the tendency of the...

Elected representatives have little incentive to pursue the interests of those electing them once they are elected. This well-known principle-agent problem leads, in a variety of theories of government, to nonoptimally large levels of government expenditure. An implication is that budgetary...

This paper deals with the influence of factor mobility on local infrastructure policy and rent-seeking activities of local interest groups. It employs a model where households differ with respect to their endowment with the immobile factor land. Local governments decide about the level of...

This paper takes stock of German public support measures in favour of families. The database comprises benefits from family-specific norms of tax law as well as cash and in-kind transfers both from public budgets (federal, states’ and local layer) and from the social insurance system...

The paper deals with the issue in how far the fiscal policy of the German Laender can be considered as sustainable. Comparing the fiscal policy stance and budgets of the 16 German states, only Bavaria and Saxony are pursuing a fiscal policy which may be labelled as sustainable. The other states...

This paper discusses the developments in the markets for CO2 emissions rights since the Kyoto Protocol has been signed. The different emission trading schemes dominated by the ETS of the European Union and the Clean Development mechanism are surveyed. These schemes will need to be incorporated...

In einer Regressionsanalyse werden mögliche Determinanten kommunaler Verschuldung untersucht. Von erheblicher Bedeutung sind die SGBII-Quote und das Zusammenspiel aus Einwohnerzahl und Einwohnerdichte. Zudem spielt die Länderzugehörigkeit der Kommunen eine große Rolle. Unterschiede gibt es...

This paper develops a model of the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. The proposed two-country monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities encompasses the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature: correlation of...

The European Unions's task of providing Trans-European Networks (TENs) in transportation, communications and energy transmission which has been enacted by the treaty of Maastricht, is not confined to internal networks in the EU. Since 1994 this task has been widened so as to give support to the...