I investigate how political uncertainty influences corporate investment decisions employinga unique panel dataset of German manufacturing firms. I use data on firms’ self-reportedinvestment realizations, plans and revisions. The firm-specific user cost of capital capturesthe current...

Previous studies used general government data to examine whether national governments' electoral motives and ideology influenced budget composition in OECD countries. General government data includes, however, the state and local level. Using new data for general and central government over the...

I investigate whether the spatial administrative structure of agglomerations is associatedwith local business tax rates in core cities of agglomerations. Using data for Germanmunicipalities, I define agglomerations based on distances and based on cumulativepopulation densities. The results show...

This paper develops a model of tax competition with three countries, which initially form a union where countries refrain from using different tax rates in different sectors of the economy. We study the impact of one country leaving the union. We show that the introduction of discriminatory...

Applying the hedonic approach to land prices, this paper investigates the capitalization of public services and pure amenities in a cross section of German communities. Possible spill-over effects from neighboring municipalities are explicitly included in the analysis and prove to be of...

Fiscal rules are a frequent policy measure to restrict deficit-taking among incumbent politicians. In times of increased and sustained investment needs to mitigate the consequences of climate change, and to promote the digital and structural transformation, fiscal rules have become subject to...

We present the first randomized survey experiment in the context of tax compliance to assess the role of social norms and reciprocity for intrinsic tax morale. We find that participants in a reciprocity treatment have significantly higher tax morale than those in a social-norm treatment. This...

Using an unbalanced panel of 27 OECD countries over the period 1970–2011, I examinewhether electoral motives influenced creative accounting. Governments engage in“below-the-line” operations, such as transactions in financial assets, that do not show upin the deficit figures but give rise...

Principal-agent problems can arise when preferences of voters are not aligned with preferences of political representatives. Often the consequence of the political principalagentproblem is political catering to special interests. In this paper I provide examples of principal-agent problems...

Deutschland wurde bereits zweimal, 1966–1969 und 2005–2009, von einer großen Koalition regiert. Deskriptive Zeitreihenanalysen wirtschaftspolitischer Kennzahlen zeigen nicht auf, dass es unter diesen großen Koalitionen signifikante Kurswechsel in der Wirtschaftspolitik gab. Qualitative...