Um die fiskalische Nachhaltigkeit der Politik bzw. einzelner Reformmaßnahmen zu messen, hat die Wirtschaftswissenschaft in den letzten Jahren mehrere Instrumente eingeführt. Hierzu zählt auch die Generationenbilanz, die Anfang der 1990er-Jahre in den USA entwickelt wurde. Der vorliegende...

Increasing the attractiveness of voting is often seen as a remedy for unequal par- ticipation and the influence of special-interest groups on public policy. However, lower voting costs may also bring less informed citizens to the poll inviting efforts to sway these voters. We substantiate this...

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union...

This paper provides a characterization of the fiscal policy framework in four established federal countries with heterogeneous intergovernmental relations and demographic characteristics: Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. We consider the implications of fiscal federalism from...

How a sustainable fiscal policy can be performed in a federal system is not only a Swiss problem but is also discussed in other federal countries like Germany and Austria, and in the European Union. Contrary to most other countries, the Swiss fiscal system is characterised by an extensive fiscal...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...

This paper explores the role of political stability on fiscal policy choices in a time-series analysis over 158 years on the Swiss federal level. We argue that the fiscal-commons problem of public finances is affected by the time-horizon of a finance minister. Arguably, the incentives for an...

Using a new data set on Swiss state and local governments from 1890 to today, we analyze how the adoption of proportional representation affects fiscal policy. We show that proportional systems shift spending toward broad goods (e.g. education and welfare benefits) but decrease spending on...

Der Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt (SWP) steht nicht erst in der Kritik, seit immer mehr Länder Schwierigkeiten haben, seine Vorgaben zu erfüllen. Dennoch müssen Länder, die eine Währungsunion bilden, ein Interesse daran haben, ihr Finanzgebaren gegenseitig zu kontrollieren, da die...