I present the first database of historical local population figures for all Germany. The German Local Population Database (GPOP) includes total population in 1871, 1910, 1939, 1946, 1961, 1987, 1996, 2011, and 2019 for the universe of all German municipalities, counties, and states at consistent...

The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

A key figure which can be applied to measuring inter-generational imbalances involved in existing public pension schemes is given by the implicit tax that is levied on each generation s life-time income through participation in these systems. The implicit tax arises from the fact that, quite...

We explore the role of social capital in the spread of the recent Covid-19 pandemic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Exploiting within-country variation, we show that a one standard deviation increase in social capital leads to...

We discover and document errors in public use microdata samples ("PUMS files") of the 2000 Census, the 2003-2006 American Community Survey, and the 2004-2009 Current Population Survey. For women and men ages 65 and older, age- and sex-specific population estimates generated from the PUMS files...

We study local government incentives to misreport the information required to implement a formula grant. We focus specifically on population, in theory the easiest variable for the grantor to verify. We analyze the Spanish case and show how a switch from the use of census to registered...

Measuring effective tax rates using tax revenue data is attractive, given that revenues collected capture the net effect of tax provisions and taxpayer behaviour that are difficult to model. Yet reliance on aggregate tax and income data requires restrictive assumptions and significantly limits...