Die bisherige Vergabe der Hilfen für die Flankierung des Kohleausstiegs in den ostdeutschen Ländern wird zuweilen kritisch gesehen, so auch vor kurzem in dieser Zeitschrif. Wesentlicher Kritikpunkt dabei ist, dass die geplanten Projekte zu einem erheblichen Teil Maßnahmen unterstützen, die...

Max Lay und Andreas Peichl, ifo Institut, schätzen die Budgetwirkungen der Entlastungspakete über die drei Jahre auf 130 Mrd. Euro oder auf 3,6% in Relation zum Bruttoinlandsprodukt im Jahr 2021. Dies sei eher die Untergrenze. Zudem gingen die Versuche des Staates, die Bevölkerung in der...

Should economic policy be guided by rules? In this paper, we take the perspective of the Freiburg School and trace its argument for rule-based Ordnungspolitik back to the roots of the concept. In doing so, will not offer a comprehensive review of the literature, but argue closely along the works...

This paper surveys possible motivations for having a net wealth tax. After giving a short overview over the state of wealth taxation in OECD countries, we discuss both popular arguments for such a tax, as well as economic arguments. It is argued that classical normative principles of taxation...

We argue that perceived fairness of the income generation process affects the association between income inequality and subjective well-being, and that there are systematic differences in this regard between countries that are characterized by a high or, respectively, low level of actual...

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...

We analyze the rise and decline of the steel and mining industries in the regions of Saarland, Lorraine und Luxemburg over a long period, from the mid-19th century to 2003. Our main focus in on the period of structural decline in these industries after the second world war. Differences in the...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...