This paper explores the idea that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by employing a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a principal component analysis, seven aspects of both federalism and...

Starting from the secular fact of an increasing governmentś share, a retrospective on Adolph Wagnerś writings seems worthwhile. A leading German economist of the Bismarck era, he first formulated the famous law of increasing state activityʺ for industrializing nations. After analyzing his way...