Fiscal federalism may not be a panacea in a monetary union if it does not address the non-cooperative behaviour between fiscal policymakers. To prove this, we assess the relative merits of a fiscal federalism scheme in a monetary union and intergovernmental fiscal cooperation without such a...

The social economy (SE) is becoming increasingly present in the Spanish business network. Its special characteristics make it attractive for the development of economic activities, since they are respectful of the environment and they promote the creation of stable and quality employment, even...

Nach dem rasanten Rückgang der Defizite in den öffentlichen Haushalten kommt die Entwicklung des Budgetüberschusses nun auf niedrigem Niveau zum Stillstand. Im laufenden Jahr dürfte der Finanzierungsüberschuss von Bund, Ländern und Gemeinden 2,8 Milliarden Euro betragen (2007: 1,7...

Nach langen Jahren stagnierender und sogar rückläufiger Produktionsentwicklung folgt auf 2006 und 2007 auch 2008 eine positive Gesamtbilanz der Bauwirtschaft. Der konjunkturelle Ausblick auf das Jahr 2009 ist allerdings getrübt. Die deutsche Bauproduktion wird preisbereinigt 2009 fast...

Nach der Bundestagswahl schlägt die Stunde der finanzpolitischen Wahrheit. Wer auch immer die nächste Bundesregierung stellt: Der Kassensturz nach der Wahl wird zeigen, dass kaum noch finanzpolitischer Handlungsspielraum besteht. Die öffentlichen Haushalte haben sich im Zuge der Rezession...

In recent years, a lot of rules concerning government expenditures as well as tax revenues were changed in Germany. Government expenditures in relation to GDP were reduced, income tax rates were lowered and the budget deficit declined. The structure of government expenditures changed in favor of...

In many countries, fiscal policy became strongly expansionary in order to fight the recession. Structural budget deficits increased sharply and might remain high after the end of the recession. This would raise real interest rates and would impair economic growth. Some measures to reduce the...

Cyclically induced changes in taxes and government expenditures which tend to stabilise aggregate output are called automatic stabilisers. Using a small macro model, this paper reviews alternative methods of measuring the smoothing power of automatic stabilisers and discusses their relationship...

We investigate the short-term effects of fiscal policy shocks on the German economy following the SVAR approach by Blanchard and Perotti (2002). We find that direct government expenditure shocks increase output and private consumption on impact with low statistical significance, while they...