In response to rapidly rising COVID-19 cases, nations resorted to two channels to reduce population mobility and ensure social distancing. These channels were government-ordered containment and closure measures; and voluntary reductions in mobility due to rising public awareness. Initially,...

This paper evaluates the negative causal effect of environmental tobacco exposure on health by exploiting the time and geographical variation in public-place smoking bans implemented in Switzerland between 2007 and 2011. Using monthly data from the universe of Swiss hospitals between 2004 and...

A growing body of research shows that COVID-19 both reflects and exacerbates existing inequalities. However, there are significant gaps in this research area with respect to 'horizontal' or group-based inequalities in Global South countries. Lack of group-disaggregated data often contributes. In...

This paper analyses how inequality across counties in the United States of America has shaped the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of protests. The empirical analysis combines weekly data between January and December 2020 on levels of COVID-19-related policy stringency and...

The study presents a macro-finance model to analyze the impacts of a fiscal policy shock in the Brazilian term structure of interest rate in the period 1999-2010. Fiscal policy explains a higher proportion of the long-term interest rate variance (25% of the five years rate) comparing to the...

This paper studies Comprehensive Performance Assessment, an explicit incentive scheme for local government in England. Motivated by a simple theoretical political agency model, we predict that CPA should increase service quality and local taxation, but have an ambiguous effect on the efficiency...

Das deutsche Staatswesen und seine Verwaltung zeigen sich den aktuellen Herausforderungen nicht mehr in dem Umfang gewachsen, wie es Bürger und Wirtschaft erwarten. Entscheidungsprozesse im föderalen Bundesstaat sind oft sehr langwierig, und einmal getroffene Entscheidungen von Bund und...

Viele Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Union vergeben staatliche Innovationshilfen, um die Innovationstätigkeit von Unternehmen anzuregen. Abhängig davon, ob die Förderung auf der Ebene der Länder, des Bundes oder der Europäischen Union angesiedelt ist, werden unterschiedliche Effekte...

Auf den verschiedenen Stufen des Länderfinanzausgleichs wird die Finanzkraft der Länder relativ deutlich angeglichen. Dennoch haben sich die Länder sehr unterschiedlich stark verschuldet. Ab 2020 wird die Schuldenbremse für die Länder wirksam. Wie die unterschiedliche Finanzkraft bisher...