The first chapter investigates the effect of parliamentary supermajority voting requirements for the adoption of new expenditures on government spending. I analyse the introduction of supermajority voting rules in three Swiss cantons in the 1990s. I consider total current expenditures as well as...

The second chapter aims to calculate maximum sustainable debt ratios in advanced economies. We estimate a model based on countries' economic fundamentals. The model incorporates feedback effects between interest rates and debt ratios, allows for multi-period debt and considers different fiscal...

The third chapter examines the effect of physician coverage on infant mortality and the incidence of common childhood diseases. We utilise historical data and variation in the regional physician density provided by discriminatory policies in Germany in 1933, when Jewish physicians were expulsed...

We consider unobserved components time series models where the components are stochastically evolving over time and are subject to stochastic volatility. It enables the disentanglement of dynamic structures in both the mean and the variance of the observed time series. We develop a simulated...