Members of parliament (MPs) often decide on their own salaries. Voters dislike self-serving politicians, and politicians are keen to gratify their voters. In line with the political business cycle theories, politicians thus may well delay deciding on increases in salaries until after elections....

Since 2007 the German state governments have been allowed by a constitutional reform to set real estate transfer tax rates. We exploit this reform and investigate whether government ideology predicts the levels and increases in the real estate transfer tax rates. The results show that leftwing...

In der Oktober-Umfrage des Ökonomenpanels wurden Professoren der Volkswirtschaftslehre zur Zukunft des deutschen Rentensystems befragt. Anlass hierzu war die Forderung von Finanzminister Olaf Scholz, das aktuelle Rentenniveau auch über das Jahr 2025 hinaus auf dem aktuellen Niveau zu...

In dem Wissen, dass viele Bürger Diätenerhöhungen kritisch sehen, liegt es nahe, dass Abgeordnete ihre Diäten besser direkt nach Wahlen erhöhen als unmittelbar vor den Wahlen. In einer neuen Studie des ifo Instituts wurde anhand von Daten für 15 deutsche Bundesländer im Zeitraum...

We investigate whether left-wing governments decrease wage inequality among civil servants. The data is based on salaries of civil servants in the German states. Since a reform in 2006, German state governments are allowed to design salaries of civil servants. We employ encompassing data for pay...

In 2006, the reform of the German fiscal constitution realigned legislative powers between the federal and the state governments. Since 2007, the German state governments have been allowed to design real estate transfer tax rates. We investigate whether government ideology predicts the levels...