This paper analyzes the impact of fiscal federalism on income inequality and redistribution. Theoretically contradicting arguments ask for empirical evidence to obtain a better knowledge of this relationship. We rely on the institutional setting in Switzerland to study the issue empirically....

We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-) distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD...

Has the "Swiss interest rate anomaly" persisted after the financial crisis? Regarding the hypothesis that the Swiss interest rate anomaly results from systemic risk anticipation, we discuss whether Switzerland remains an interest rate island in the wake of the financial crisis. We find evidence...

The impact of corporate income taxes on location decisions of firms is widely debated in the tax competition literature. Tax rate differences across jurisdictions may lead to distortions of firms investment decisions. Empirical evidence on tax induced relocation and subsequent economic...

Following the ambiguous results in the literature aimed at understanding the empirical link between fiscal federalism and economic growth, this paper revisits the question using a Bayesian Model Averaging approach. The analysis suggests that the failure to appropriately account for model...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...

Over 10 years ago, Feld and Voigt (2003) introduced the first indicator for objectively meas-uring the actual independence of the judiciary and demonstrated its utility in a large cross-section of countries. The indicator has been widely used, but also criticized. This paper pre-sents more...

It is argued that an independent judiciary is a necessary condition for both individual liberty and economic prosperity. After having surveyed the literature dealing with how to arrange for an independent judiciary, the authors derive some additional policy implications by drawing on two...