There is widespread concern, especially in certain feminist circles, that a market-oriented economic system, or capitalism, disfavors women. This could take many forms, such as lower wages for the same type of work, reduced career opportunities, disparities in ownership and the upholding of...

It is widely accepted that good institutions caused the massive increase in living standards enjoyed by ordinary people over the past two hundred years. But what caused good institutions? Scholars once pointed to the polycentric governance structures of medieval Europe, but this explanation has...

This research exploits novel evidence on current and historical inequality dynamics, as well as an instrumental variable (IV) strategy (founded on historical settler mortality à la Acemoglu et al.), to document the fundamental role of income redistribution through taxes and transfers in...

The purpose of the paper is to show that the nature of the relationship between governance and democracy varies depending on how the two terms (of a political discourse) are defined, that when the definition of one term encompasses distinctive features of the other we find that governance and...

Florian Dorn erstellte diesen Beitrag während seines Promotionsstudiums an der Universität München (LMU). Die Studie wurde im September 2020 abgeschlossen und von der Fakultät für Volkswirtschaftslehre als Dissertation angenommen. Die Dissertation trägt zur Empirie der Ökonomie des...

Fiscal decentralization is high on the agenda in policy fora. This paper empirically investigates the underlying causes of fiscal decentralization, based on the predictions of a simple political economy model. We argue that the likeliness that a central government engages in devolution of powers...

Why is corruption-defined here as the misuse of public office for private gain-perceived to be more widespread in some countries than others? Different theories associate cross-national variation in the extent of corruption with particular historical and cultural traditions, levels of economic...

Across countries we observe very different institutional arrangements and very different levels of fiscal centralization. The recent years have witnessed strong movements for both decentralization and secession. At the same time, a divided country has reunified (Germany), large free trade zones...

This paper presents a simple positive model that unifies most of the results of the normative literature on fiscal federalism. The model describes an economy characterized by two levels of government, one public good, and a private good. The predictions of the model are tested by using a new set...

Is the United States sufficiently democratic? And does it provide sufficient protection for the thriving markets that have sustained American prosperity? The answers are not obvious because these two values conflict. Many democratic theorists argue that the Constitution is not democratic because...