We document substantial cross-sectional heterogeneity of German establishments’ real wage cyclicality over the business cycle. While wages of the median establishment are moderately procyclical, 36 percent of establishments have countercyclical wages. We estimate a negative connection between...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...