The literature on taxes and public finance generally focuses on revenues, an easily observable and generally available variable, as the observable measure of tax policy. Still, revenues depend on many determinants other than the political will and policy objectives of the government. It is...

The direct democratic choice of an examination standard, i.e., a performance level required to graduate, is evaluated against a utilitarian welfare function. It is shown that the median preferred standard is inefficiently low if the marginal cost of reaching a higher performance reacts more...

Does the enfranchisement of women lead to an increase in public support for government spending? By utilizing a natural experiment from Switzerland, I test this hypothesis empirically. I analyze the voting outcomes of two very similar referendum ballots concerning the federal government's...