Johannes Vatter verknüpft die ökonomische Zufriedenheitsforschung – besser bekannt unter dem Begriff Glücksforschung – mit Fragen der Finanzwissenschaft. Entlang zahlreicher empirischer Befunde für Deutschland leitet er eine Vielzahl an steuer‐ und sozialpolitischen Implikationen ab....

Die Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung hatte sich in Deutschland vor dem Beginn der Finanzkrise zunehmend ungleich entwickelt, seitdem aber ist die Ungleichheit zurückgegangen. Ob Ökonomen beurteilen können und sollen, was eine "richtige und gerechte" Einkommensverteilung ist, bleibt...

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...

A common political claim is that decentralized governments undermine policy makers' ability to fight fiscal imbalance. This paper examines how different fiscal institutions influence the likelihood of a successful fiscal adjustment. Using a panel of the Swiss cantons from 1981 to 2001, we first...

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...

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...

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...