The economic literature often argues that basic income schemes and low wage subsidies to employees are just special cases of a negative income tax. In this debate, it is ignored that these concepts target different population subgroups. This paper investigates the different target groups and the...

Since 1970 public debt in Germany has risen dramatically. The debt growth has neither been stopped by the constitutional deficit limit, nor by the European Stability and Growth Pact. At the moment, the cyclical upswing triggers increasing tax revenues and diminishing deficits. Yet this does not...

Mircrosimulation models (MSM) and Computable General Equilibrium models (CGE) have both been widely used in policy analysis. The combination of these two model types allows the utilisation of the advantages of both types. The aim of this paper is to describe the state-of-the-art in simulation...

Häufig erfahren die Bürger wenig über den Nutzen öffentlicher Güter im Vergleich zum Steueropfer, das sie dafür aufbringen müssen: Gegenüber öffentlichen Gütern besteht keine Konsumentensouveränität. Als Ersatz dafür könnte wenigstens eine Wählersouveränität bei öffentlichen...

The introduction of a flat tax is supposed to have several advantages. Administration and compliance costs are reduced, as well as incentives for tax evasion. Furthermore, positive employment and growth effects are expected. Despite these advantages, a flat rate tax is not very popular in most...

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians ́outside earnings. We propose a simple theoretical model with politicians facing a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The model has a testable...

When comparing tax benefit systems across Europe, Germany is usually regarded as a country with a high level of taxes and contributions which is often seen as a main challenge for the economic performance of the welfare state. In this paper, we analyse the progressivity and redistribution...