As from a political economy perspective, politicians often fail to implement structural reforms, we investigate if the resistance to reform is based on the differences in the risk preferences of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. Based on the empirical results of a survey of the population in...

From a political economy perspective, politicians often fail to implement structural reforms. In this contribution we investigate if the resistance to reform is based on the differences in the risk preferences of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. Based on three surveys among the German...

The literature has identified that countries with higher levels of openness tend to present a larger government sector as a way to reduce the risks to the economy that openness entails. This paper argues that there are a number of policies that can mitigate trade-induced risks, many of which do...

There exists a persistent disagreement in the literature over the effect of business cycles on economic growth. This paper offers a solution to this disagreement, suggesting that volatility carries a positive direct effect, but also a negative indirect effect, operating through the insurance...

What explains cross-national differences in the fiscal impact of government, including the size of the welfare state? Standard explanations center on citizen and government ideology and ethnic heterogeneity, with a smaller role for institutions such as majoritarianism, presidentialism, and...

In addition to valuing whether a tax policy is equitable, efficient, and administrable, I argue we should ask if a tax policy is politically just. Others have made a similar case for valuing political justice as democracy in implementing just tax policy. I join that call and highlight why it...

Taxation involves the compulsory transfer of resources among members of society. Tax policy is concerned with how societies carry out taxation. That is a technical and legal question, but it is inescapably a political, social, and cultural one as well. To study tax policy is to engage...

Measuring the size of government is not simple. Standard measures omit important aspects of government action such as the many deductions, credits, and other tax preferences used to influence resource allocation. We argue that many tax preferences are effectively spending. Traditional measures...

This chapter explains how the generation of renewable energy and the creation of sustainable communities can guide capitalism to survive climate change on a self-reinforcing basis. The process depends upon introducing an ecological “use it or lose it” rule for owning money, land, buildings...

Dictatorship has been one of the most persistent regime types in history. Different dictators have applied different strategies for obtaining political support in different societies. We discuss and empirically estimate the hypothesis that states that dictators rely more on military for...