This paper looks at the intergovernmental mechanisms by which federalism operates in Australia, notably the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC), Australian Loan Council (ALC). These three main systems contribute to improve Australian intergovernmental...

An increasing number of municipalities cooperates in the field of economic development. In this paper, we focus on a specific instrument in this field, namely the development of joint business parks. We apply a hazard model to data from West-German municipalities between 2000 and 2015. We find...

We ask whether inter-municipal cooperation serve as a platform by which municipalities coor-dinate tax policies and reduce the intensity of tax competition. In this paper, we focus on inter-municipal cooperation in form of inter-local industrial parks. We apply the generalized syn-thetic control...

This paper empirically analyses the relationship between political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds and public budget deficits utilising panel data on 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. Building on sociological, as well as economic, research, we argue that the socioeconomic status of...

In response to the recent sovereign debt crisis, the member states of the European Union agreed to enact balanced budget rules in their national legislation. However, little is known about the public's opinion of balanced budget rules. To fill this gap, we conducted a survey among 2,000...

Seit Einführung der neuen Schuldenregel hat sich die Finanzlage der deutschen Bundesländer deutlich verbessert. Nach unseren Berechnungen mit dem Aggregierten Quotierungsverfahren konnten die meisten Länder ihre strukturellen Budgetdefizite abbauen und im Jahr 2017 schon 14 Länder...

Nach den Berechnungen der Autoren mit dem vom Stabilitätsrat verwendeten Aggregierten Quotierungsverfahren (AQV) konnten im Jahr 2017 schon 14 Bundesländer strukturell mindestens ausgeglichene Haushalte erzielen. In der aktuellen Niedrigzinsphase überzeichnet das AQV jedoch die erzielten...

We analyze the impact of large firms on business tax rates using data from German mu-nicipalities in Hesse in 1998-2005. Results suggest that business tax rates decrease with tax-payers' concentration, indicating strong local lobbying power of large firms.

This paper analyzes the impact of fiscal equalization on asymmetric tax competition when positive agglomeration externalities are present. It shows that equalization of standardized tax revenue improves the spatial allocation of capital provided that agglomeration externalities are sufficiently...

This paper is based on the conjecture that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by drawing on a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a pricipal component analysis, seven aspects of both...