The economic tradition of ordoliberalism, understood as the theoretical and policy ideas of the Freiburg School, emerged in 1930s and 1940s Germany. In the years thereafter, it was quickly superseded by Keynesianism and other theories imported from the English-speaking world. The crisis in...

Aggregate votes for incumbent parties in post-war Germany were determined by the weighted-average growth of real per capita disposable income. Each percentage point of per capita real disposable income growth sustained over the legislative term yielded approximately two percentage points of...

Aggregate votes for incumbent parties in post-war Germany were determined by the weighted-average growth of real per capita disposable income and the attrition of power, especially when the Federal Chancellor sought re-election more than twice. Similar to earlier results for the US, each...

Organizations in democratic societies often encounter detrimental public policies that are later reversed due to rather predictable political cycles. The standard organizational responses to detrimental public policies examined in the literature include exiting the market altogether, attempting...

This paper studies the impact of tax-based consolidations on reelection outcomes. Using a granular database of tax-based consolidations for a panel of 10 OECD countries over the last 40 years, we find that tax reforms are politically costly but some reforms are costlier than others. Measures...

I describe a structural method to identify different channels affecting the social choice of redistribution using a DSGE model, microdata on the support for redistribution, and microdata on voting. I find that voters who could benefit from welfare policies vote against them because they hold...

We propose a political economy mechanism that explains the presence of fiscal regimes punctuated by crisis periods. Our model focuses on the interaction between successive deficit-biased governments subject to i.i.d. fiscal shocks. We show that the economy transitions between a fiscally...

I describe a structural method to quantify the contribution of different elements of social choice to the level of redistribution. Estimating a DSGE model with microdata on the support for redistribution, I find that if voters disregarded their ideological views on welfare policies,...

I describe a structural method to quantify the contribution of different elements of social choice to the level of redistribution. Estimating a DSGE model with microdata on the support for redistribution, I find that if voters disregarded their ideological views on welfare policies,...

We propose a political economy mechanism that explains the presence of fiscal regimes punctuated by crisis periods. Our model focuses on the interaction between successive deficit-biased governments subject to i.i.d. fiscal shocks. We show that the economy transitions between a fiscally...