Recent empirical literature has shown that the determination of intergovernmental grants is highly influenced by the political bargaining power of the recipient states. In these models federal politicians are assumed to buy the support of state voters, state politicians and state interest groups...

Mit der rasant fortschreitenden Globalisierung und dem dynamischen Prozess der europä¬ischen Integration sind in den letzten zwei bis drei Jahrzehnten grundlegende traditionelle Denk¬kategorien über den Staat und die von ihm zu betreibende Wirtschaftspolitik systema¬tisch in Frage gestellt...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...

We demonstrate that the popular Farrell-Shapiro-framework (FSF) for the analysis of mergers in oligopolies relies regarding its policy conclusions sensitively on the assumption that rational agents will only propose privately profitable mergers. If this assumption held, a positive external...

It is argued that an independent judiciary is a necessary condition for both individual liberty and economic prosperity. After having surveyed the literature dealing with how to arrange for an independent judiciary, the authors derive some additional policy implications by drawing on two...

The information quality of mandatory financial reporting depends on two factors: (1) Are standards appropriate to produce financial statements that provide investors with sufficient information? (2) Is compliance to standards enforced by appropriate institutions? This paper addresses the...

We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to occur in jurisdictions with referendum decisions on policy centralization. Citizens choose centralization of public spending and revenue in order to internalize spillovers if individual...

Ehe und Familie wird durch das Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ein besonderer Schutz zugestanden. Basis für diese Sonderstellung ist die Idee, dass die Familie einen Schutzraum für die Erziehung von Kindern als den künftigen Trägern der Gesellschaft bieten soll. Für die...

Male and female social roles are largely predicated on the fact that male and female reproductive functions are separated in different individuals. This paper asks why gonochorism rather than hermaphroditism, is the rule among vertebrates. We argue that hermaphroditism may be unstable in the...

An increasingly important part of contemporary merger control both in the US and the EU is unilateral effects analysis, particularly with regard to oligopolistic mergers. In practice, this requires econometric analyses of past market data and, above all, the construction of simulation models in...