Numerical fiscal rules are implemented to counterbalance the deficit bias in budgetary policy. Over the recent years, an increasing number of studies try to test the actual effectiveness of fiscal rules. This meta-analysis condenses the existing evidence from different regional and federal...

The quest for political support drives to upward deviations from forecasted public deficits when i) budget procedures are soft, ii) breaking promises involving higher expenditures and lower taxes is costly in political terms, and iii) ex–post control by voters and political opposition is...

Public debts capitalize into property prices. This so far neglected fact has important consequences for the tax vs. debt choice. Property owners suffer more from the debt burden and, thus, have a stronger preference for tax financing of government spending than tenants. As a consequence of the...

Federal states in Germany are characterized by low fiscal autonomy. Equalization systems in place balance revenue differences to a considerable extent and states cannot independently set taxes of any major relevance. Although these features of German federalism are notorious for their...

This paper lays out a theory of taxation and public investment in an intertemporal setting under conditions of revenue shocks. Without borrowing restrictions, the optimal policy is characterized by smooth time paths of taxes and public investment. While the introduction of formal borrowing...

Through an intertemporal budget constraint, jurisdictions may gain advantages in tax and spending competition by 'competing' on debt. While the existing spatial econometric literature focuses on tax and spending competition, very little is known about spatial interaction via public debt. This...

We study the effectiveness of local borrowing regulations in maintaining fiscal sustainability and the effect of supervision over municipal budgeting on local debt using a panel on municipalities in Germany's most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2003 to 2011. The identification...

This paper shows that geographic patterns in public debt can be highly persistent despite drastic external shocks. I compare pre-Nazi debt in 60 districts and 132 large cities of the German Reich with current local government debt. German local government debt completely defaulted after WWII. I...

This paper investigates permanent and temporary immigration and remittance under the coexistence of unionized and non-unionized manufacturing firms in a two-sector economy. The impacts of immigration as well as remittance on respectively wages, employment, the union-nonunion wage gap and...

This paper estimates the employment effects of industry-specific, collectively-bargained minimum wages in Germany for three occupations associated with the construction sector using a difference-in-differences approach. I propose a truly exogenous control group in contrast to the control group...