Die Konsolidierung der Staatsfinanzen nach der gegenwärtigen Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise wird eines der zentralen wirtschaftspolitischen Themen der nächsten Jahre sein: Die Regelungen zur "Schuldenbremse" sehen für den Bundeshaushalt bis 2016 einen annähernd ausgeglichenen Haushalt vor, und...

The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political...

By applying a Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) approach this paper estimates the effects of fiscal policy shocks of different government sub-sectors on aggregate GDP in Germany. From a general government perspective, the results show that besides investment, it is particularly changes in...

Despite strongly equalized per capita revenue and similar budgetary institutions, fiscal performance is increasingly diverging across German federal states. Given that state and local governments are endowed with expenditure autonomy, this paper investigates whether the composition of...