There is little disagreement that the EU budget should be refocused. Redistributive agricultural and structural spending should be reduced in favour of more public good spending as the Boege and Sapir reports demand. But a public choice analysis can show that the current deadlock makes a...

Most of the EU budget is spent on redistribution. Large sums of money are transferred from the member state governments to Brussels and back to these governments. Some member states end up as net receivers and some as net payers. Most economists agree that the resources of the budget should be...

Most of the EU budget is spent on redistribution. Large sums of money are transferred from the member state governments to Brussels and back to these governments. Some member states end up as net receivers and some as net payers. Most economists agree that the resources of the budget should be...

The EU's revenue system is still typical for an organisation based on international cooperation and stands in contrast to the Union's far advanced legislative and political role. This contrast feeds the debate on granting the EU an autonomous tax source. Our contribution explores the factors...

Setting minimum tax rates is a well discussed way of mitigating pressure from tax competition. This paper investigates which motives shape the support for a minimum corporate tax among politicians. We make use of a unique data base: a survey among members of the European parliament. Our results...

This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years - a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that...

This paper studies the efficiency of decentralized leadership in federations where selfish regional governments provide regional and federal public goods and the benevolent central government implements interregional earmarked and income transfers. Without residential mobility, unlimited...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the size of an economic union and the degree of policy centralization. We consider a political economy setting in which elected representatives bargain about the degree of centralization within the union. In our model strategic delegation affects the...

Nigeria has been a federation before 1963. This was expected to foster speedy growth and development, but military interferences seem to have bedevil this dream. However, an uninterrupted democracy for about 20 years should have produced a significant result, but not much has changed. Many have...

Die internationale Entwicklungszusammenarbeit verfolgt zwei Ziele: Armutsreduzierung und Demokratisierung. Auf der Grundlage eines Rational-Choice-Modells wird gezeigt, dass diese Ziele in einem Konflikt zueinander stehen, wenn Maßnahmen westlicher Entwicklungspolitik in und auf Diktaturen...