Exploiting the natural experiment of German reunification, we study whether having experienced socialism has an enduring effect on people's basic values. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we show that individuals that lived in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) assign different...

Exploiting the "natural experiment" of German reunification, we study whether having experienced socialism has an enduring effect on people's basic values. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we show that individuals that lived in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) assign...

This paper investigates the political economy of after merger effects of the large scale municipal amalgamations in the German state of Baden-Württemberg in the early 1970s. By exploiting the huge variance in the amalgamation process in terms of number of participating municipalities,...

We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-) distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD...

In the history of economic thought Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact in establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. Even though there is a growing interest in his ideas especially from an Austrian and a Constitutional Economics perspective, his influence on the...

The Swiss debt brake is widely appreciated as one of the most rationally designed fiscal rules in the world and was thus also discussed as blueprint in the debates about fiscal rules in Germany, the European Union member states and Israel. However, evidence that this rule really contributes to...

This paper provides, after a contextualizing introduction, the first-time translation of Walter Eucken's presentation during the first session of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, April 1-10, 1947. Eucken was the only scholar based in Germany to attend the conference and took an...

In den letzten Jahren hat sich ein breiter Literaturstrang etabliert, der neue Formen paternalistischer Interventionen vorschlägt, um individuelle Entscheidungen zu verbessern, die nicht vollständig rational sind. Die Motivation hierfür liegt in zahlreichen Verhaltensanomalien und anderen...

Using a framework that distinguishes short-term consumer preferences, individual reflective preferences and political preferences, we discuss from a constitutional economics perspective whether individuals find it in their common constitutional interest to endow representatives and bureaucrats...

This paper investigates the effects of electoral system changes in Japan, New Zealand and Italy on the overall level of spending as well as on social spending. In 1996 both Japan and New Zealand switched from a majoritarian rule to a mixed-member electoral system. Italy switched from a...