We portray determinants of social expenditure in OECD countries. Many theories have been proposed to describe why social expenditure has increased in industrialized countries. Determinants include globalization, political-?institutional variables such as government ideology and electoral...

We examine whether voters rewarded conservative politicians who were voting in favor of same-sex marriage. Data is based on a roll-call vote in the German national parliament (Bundestag) in June 2017. This roll-call vote drastically influenced the public discourse about the social political...

We propose that crisis experience influences preferences towards COVID-19 vaccination and the speed of vaccination during the initial phase when vaccines became available. We use macro and micro data to empirically investigate our theory and introduce a novel crisis experience index. Evidence...

We examine how trade openness influences income inequality within countries. The sample includes 139 countries over the period 1970-2014. We employ predicted openness as instrument to deal with the endogeneity of trade openness. The effect of trade openness on income inequality differs across...

This paper examines how policy affects social expenditures. Analyzing an OECD panel from 1980 to 2003, five political variables are tested: Election- and pre-election years, the ideological party composition of the governments, the number of coalition partners and the fact, if the ruling...

This paper examines how politicians influenced social security policy in Germany. Using yearly data from the German Pension Insurance from 1957 to 2005, revenues as well as expenditures are analysed in linear regression models, respectively. In accordance with opportunistic political behaviour,...

I test if parties matter with respect to the allocation of public expenditures in Germany. Considering the allocation of rights and duties due to the federal structure, two econometric models are estimated. First, a SURE model analyses spending at the federal level for the period from 1950 to...

This paper examines the effects of political determinants on the allocation of public expenditures. Analyzing an OECD panel from 1990 to 2004, a SURE model controls for the contemporaneous correlation between the different expenditure categories (COFOG). I find that left governments set other...