Die Corona-Krise wirkt wie ein Brandbeschleuniger in der Diskussion um das Ausmaß staatlichen Einflusses in der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft. Soll sich der Staat in Deutschland und Europa stärker steuernd in das Wirtschaftsgeschehen einmischen oder wird es vielmehr Zeit, den Marktmechanismen...

James Buchanan pioneered the political economics of public debt 60 years ago. In this paper, we contrast his thinking of the burden of debt, the public choice mechanisms that lead to excessive debt and the demand for constitutional restraints on public debt with its development, its...

German policy during the Eurozone crisis supposedly follows an ordoliberal tradition. In this paper, we discuss to what extent this contention holds and to what extent Germany pragmatically responded to different crisis phenomena. A proper analysis of ordoliberal thinking reveals that the...

This paper provides evidence that most German states (Laender) have unsustainable public finances by exploiting a newly compiled database covering the years 1950‐2011. Although the Laender are closely intertwined we are the first to apply “second generation” panel techniques that control...

We analyze the sustainability of public finances in the 16 states (Laender) of the Federal Republic of Germany using an unprecedentedly comprehensive fiscal dataset covering the period from 1950 to 2011 for West German Laender and from 1991 to 2011 for East German Laender. As we apply unit root...

Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on the intra-jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical effects on the finances of other levels of government have yet to be explored thoroughly. This paper investigates the influence...