We use a neoclassical production function to analyze the effects of knowledge spillovers via entrepreneurship on economic performance of 337 German districts. To take the spatial dependence structure of the data into account, we estimate a spatial Durbin model. We highlight the importance of the...

We estimate the impact of effective profit taxation on the financial leverage of corporations on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany. The financial...

We estimate the elasticity of corporate taxable income with respect to the effective corporate tax rate on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany....

This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in three questions: (1) Does the partisan identity of the local mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan...

We calculate the expected incidence of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) using industry and household-level data. By combining data on direct CO2 emissions by production sector from the German Environmental Account with the German Input-Output Accounts, we calculate the CO2...

The self-employment rate includes entrepreneurs out of opportunity and entrepreneurs out of necessity. While the effect of opportunity entrepreneurs on economic development should be positive, there should be no or a negative effect of necessity entrepreneurship. We use a geographically weighted...

This paper studies the importance of politician's qualification, in terms of education and experience, for fiscal outcomes. The analysis is based on a large panel for 2,031 German municipalities for which we have collected information on municipal budgets as well as the election results and...

Do incumbents in an election have an advantage, and if so, are these advantages heterogeneous across parties or government and opposition? We first present a theoretical discussion on the possible heterogeneity of incumbency effects in a pure two-party system. Then, we estimate the incumbency...

In view of rising wage inequality and increasing poverty, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of the introduction of a nationwide legal minimum wage of 7.5 per hour on the basis of a...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...