The paper applies standard public choice reasoning to the negotiations on EU enlargement and the Treaty of Nice. The starting point is the assumption that accession can only be successfully completed if the interests of decisive actors in present EU countries are respected. Decisive actors in...

Gegenstand dieses Beitrags ist eine quantitativ orientierte Diskussion einiger Wirkungen einer Umstrukturierung des Steuersystems anhand der neuesten und wesentlich erweiterten Version des Konstanzer aggregierten Ungleichgewichtsmodells für die westdeutsche Volkswirtschaft für den Zeitraum von...

In this paper, we analyze politicians’ expectations about future compliance with a fiscal rule, and in particular the dependence of the expectations on their role in parliament (opposition vs. incumbent government coalition). In addition, we explore how opposition and incumbent politicians...

Much economic analysis derives policy recommendations based on social welfare criteria intended to model the preferences of a policy maker. Yet, little is known about policy maker’s normative views in a way amenable to this use. In a behavioral experiment, we elicit German legislators’...

Over the last decade, the defense industry has obtained relevance on Brazilian public policies. Departing from the premise that the success of this process requires not only that the Armed Forces have modern equipment and skilled military to operate them, but also that the country retains the...

We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the...

This paper examines the Lucas Paradox and the Allocation Puzzle of international capital flows referring to a panel data set of EMU countries and major industrialized and emerging economies. Overall, the results do not provide evidence in favour of the Lucas Paradox and the Allocation Puzzle....

This paper compares two single-equation approaches from the recent nowcast literature: Mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) regressions and bridge equations. Both approach are used to nowcast a low-frequency variable such as quarterly GDP growth by higher-frequency business cycle indicators. Three...