Klaus-Dirk Henke, TU Berlin und Wolfram Richter, TU Dortmund, identifizieren in ihrem Kommentar gravierende Ordnungsdefizite beim Wettbewerb im deutschen Gesundheitswesen. Sie gehen solchen Defiziten im Bereich der GKV nach und benennen konkrete Mängel, die von der Politik behoben werden sollten.

Demographic change is a particular challenge for fiscal federalism, because the decline of population is expected to affect the various regions within a country unequally. Population growth and shrinkage co-exist, thus requiring both upward and downward adjustments in physical and social...

Most German economists show strong patterns of professional specialisation. In their work, they either focus on basic research or on policy consultancy. The evidence provided by Haucap und Mödl has been used to question work incentives in academia. The suggestion to change work incentives,...

Homburg (1990 and 1992) shows that the existence of productive land prevents an economy from being dynamically inefficient. The result is extended to a world with uncertain labour income. It is shown that PAYG social security fails to be Pareto improving on almost all paths of economic growth....

We analyze the problem of harmonizing public debt and public pension schemes in a multi-jurisdictional setting. Our main findings are that harmonization seems to be necessary on efficiency grounds if households can freely migrate between the jurisdictions. On the other hand, harmonization is...

This paper studies the efficiency effects of granting deductions for work-related expenses. It is shown that much depends on whether the expenses are required for increasing taxable income and on whether the expenses are social costs. Among the noteworthy results are the following. Expenses for...

The usual arguments pro destination-based, consumption-oriented or pro origin-based, production-oriented VAT are found wanting. They largely ignore tax effects on locational choices of firms. This paper provides a comparison of consumption and production taxation within a model of firm and...

Taxing internationally mobile factors of production has been dismissed as an inefficient means of raising tax revenue. This paper addresses the question of whether it is efficient to tax capital at source when labor markets and the taxation of lumpsum income suffer from imperfections. Four...