The current system of fiscal equalisation mainly allocates revenues from federal taxes to the community based on the population size indicator. This method does not sufficiently take into account the special charges that fall upon the Länder and municipalities as a result of their tasks....

A real-effort experiment is investigated in which supervisors have to rate the performance of individual workers who in turn receive a bonus payment based on these ratings. We compare a baseline treatment in which supervisors are not restricted in their rating behavior to a forced distribution...

"Es muß damit gerechnet werden, daß aus Gründen, die vornehmlich mit anhaltender Wachstumsschwäche einerseits, technologischer Arbeitslosigkeit andererseits zusammenhängen, die die Wirtschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland kennzeichnende Beschäftigungskrise andauern wird. Drei Antworten...

"Es muß damit gerechnet werden, daß aus Gründen, die vornehmlich mit anhaltender Wachstumsschwäche einerseits, technologischer Arbeitslosigkeit andererseits zusammenhängen, die die Wirtschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland kennzeichnende Beschäftigungskrise andauern wird. Drei Antworten...

We empirically investigate if tournaments between heterogeneous contestants are less intense. To test our hypotheses we use professional sports data from the TOYOTA Handball-Bundesliga, the major handball league in Germany. Using either differences in betting odds or rankings to measure ability...

We empirically investigate the impact of incentive scheme structure on the degree of cooperation in firms using a unique and representative data set. Combining employee survey data with detailed firm level information on the relative importance of individual, team, and company performance for...

Die gegenwärtige Lage der Weltwirtschaft ist von enormen Einkommensunterschieden zwischen reichen und armen Ländern geprägt. Entwicklungsunterschiede dieser Art gibt es erst seit der Epoche des modernen wirtschaftlichen Wachstums (Kuznets). Daher steht die Frage zur Beantwortung an, warum...

A real effort experiment is investigated in which supervisors have to rate the performance of individual workers who in turn receive a bonus payment based on these ratings. We compare a baseline treatment in which supervisors were not restricted in their rating behavior to a forced distribution...

This paper investigates the effects of managerial incentives on favoritism in promotion decisions. First, we theoretically show that favoritism leads to a lower quality of promotion decisions and in turn lower efforts. But the effect can be mitigated by pay-for-performance incentives for...

This paper discusses the state of economic policy advice in Germany and describes and analyses the results of a new ranking of German economists which not only measures individual economists’ impact on research (via the h-index), but also their impact on the general public (through media...