Why do political constituencies delegate decision power to representative assemblies? And how is the size of such assemblies determined? We analyze these questions of constitutional design in a model with voters learning their preferred alternative only after engaging in costly information...

We model the process of coalition formation in the 16th German Bundestag as a hedonic coalition formation game. In order to induce players' preferences in the game we apply the Shapley value of the simple game describing all winning coalitions in the Bundestag. Using different stability notions...

Over the past four decades, the accumulation of policy legacies and public debt has led to a decline in fiscal flexibility in Germany and the United States. By applying an index of fiscal democracy to Germany, the paper illustrates the associated shrinkage of democratic control over budget...

Erhöhungen der eigenen Bezüge durch die Parlamentarier rufen in der Öffentlichkeit immer wieder Empörung hervor. Welche Rolle spielt das individuelle Risiko der Abgeordneten, nach dem Ende des Mandats von Einkommenseinbußen und Arbeitslosigkeit betroffen zu sein? Welche Konsequenzen ergeben...