Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data...

Starting from the secular fact of an increasing governmentś share, a retrospective on Adolph Wagnerś writings seems worthwhile. A leading German economist of the Bismarck era, he first formulated the famous law of increasing state activityʺ for industrializing nations. After analyzing his way...

The political blessings of federalism are the core of our discussion. These benefits are operationalized as the decrease in the number of outvoted in a federal system with majority voting as an important source of regime satisfaction. The approach originates from the work of Roland Pennock who...

Das Buchanan-Kooperationsmodell der voluntary provision of public goods wird in diesem Beitrag formalisiert und auf den Fall eines reichen und eines armen Akteurs angewandt. Hinsichtlich der Nutzenfunktionen der Akteure werden zwei unterschiedliche Szenarienanalysiert: Während im...

We examine whether the Samuelsonian definition of public goods can be reconciled with "Wagner's Law", that is, public expenditures outpacing economic growth. While both predominantly focus on the demand-side, they differ with respect to their socio-political foundations. Taking the latter into...

Previous studies were plagued with considerable problems when interpreting and empirically analysing Wagner's Law. Therefore, we initially present some kind of "pure theory of government's share" for a two-person society based on the pure theory of public and private goods as originally...

Taking Macur Olsonś theory of the decline of nations as pathbreaking in this field we develop a formal model of the behavior of interest groups and their interaction to win some deeper insights into the interior mechanics of the interest-group-state. Followed by a brief survey of empirical...

Bei aller Hysterie, die sich an Begriffen wie Klimakatastrophe festmachen lässt und die aktuell fast schon zu Bestandteilen des Glaubensbekenntnis mutieren, ist es für Ökonomen, die sich mit Umwelt und Umweltgütern beschäftigen, umso wichtiger, nüchtern, abgewogen und rational zu urteilen,...

Based on the premise that fairness is different from equity and that it is primarily used in informal contexts we present an economic approach to fairness. Discussing the results of behavioral economics reveals the experience that people do not accept a monetary offer even if that collides with...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members of the parliament. Referring to the famous study by Freeman and Medoff (1984) and considering the more recent literature we first review unions' political power at the example of the US. We conclude that trade unions have not been very...