We discuss political economy mechanisms which can explain the resource curse, in which an increase in the size of resource rents causes a decrease in the economy's total value added. We identify a number of channels through which resource rents will alter the incentives of a political leader....

In this paper, we extend the usual models of irreversible investment under uncertainty by introducing the stock of public capital as an input for the private sector. Public investment takes place in a stochastic environment. Public capital then increases the productivity of private capital which...

This paper provides new evidence for the empirical literature that investigates the presence of political cycles in fiscal policy and, more precisely, public investments in Brazil. The approach differs from most of the studies for applying the state-space modeling. The greatest benefit is to...

The present paper explores the extent to which new joint General Budget Support (GBS) systems have been able to overcome the problems of aid dependency and negative fiscal incentives that can potentially result from high levels of on-budget aid. As approximately 90 percent of new joint GBS goes...

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...

Drei Probleme der Risikobewertung bei öffentlichen Investitionen werden behandelt. Erstes Thema ist die Frage nach der richtigen Diskontrate bei unsicherem Wirtschaftswachstum. Zentrales Ergebnis ist, dass die übliche Ramsey-Gleichung bei Unsicherheit keine Gültigkeit mehr hat und einer...