We provide a systematic analysis of fiscal consolidation in a dynamic general equilibrium model with a detailed government sector and a share of credit-constrained households. We simulate permanent cuts in government consumption, government investment, and transfer payments as well as permanent...

The paper empirically analyzes whether electoral rules make legislators differently responsive to changes in fiscal incentives. Key to the analysis are two unique reforms in the German state of Lower Saxony which changed (i) the municipal charter by replacing the council-manager system...

The present paper analyzes expectations of German politicians about the German debt brake (Schuldenbremse), which became part of the German constitution in 2009. This fiscal rule requires the federal government and the German states to run a (cyclically adjusted) budget deficit of no more than...

In 2009, Germany invested 15.4 Billion Euro in infrastructure to avert the looming recession. In this study, we evaluate whether the German stimulus program was successful in limiting the impact of the crisis on the job market. We exploit exogenous cross-sectional variation to identify the...

Based on probit estimates, this paper analyzes the effects of fiscal consolidation on the proba-bility of sovereign defaults in the short run. Using a panel of 104 developing countries from 1980 to 2009 and controlling for various economic, fiscal and political factors, we find that fiscal...

Exploiting a natural voting experiment we identify female preferences for real policy issues in the electorate. We then analyze whether female or male politicians in parliament more closely correspond to female preferences. Holding constant revealed constituent preferences, there is generally no...

We study the loss function of 15 European governments as implied by their budget balance forecasts. Results suggest that the shape of the loss function varies across countries. The loss function becomes more asymmetric as the forecast horizon increases and in advance of parliamentary election....

In several empirical contributions researchers have found a gender gap in preferences for public spending. This paper analyzes the persistence of these gender gaps when income differences between individuals are taken into consideration. Using survey data from the years 1996 and 2006 of German...

Many economic studies analyse the impact of fiscal rules and discuss their effectiveness in limiting excessive debt. A majority of these studies, however, neglects or only deals insufficiently with the potential issue of endogeneity. In this paper, we propose a novel identification approach...

Trade liberalization is no Pareto-improvement - there are winners (high-skilled) and losers (low-skilled). To compensate the losers the government is assumed to introduce unemployment benefits (UB). These benefits are financed by either a wage tax, a payroll tax, or a profit tax. Using a...