Although demographic change leaves pay-as-you-go pension systems unsustainable, reforms, such as a higher pension age, are highly unpopular. This contribution looks into the role of intrinsic motivation as a driver for pension reform acceptance. Theoretical reasoning suggests that this driver...

Fiscal federalism in Germany is characterized by lacking sub-national tax autonomy and intensive fiscal equalization. Due to a sunset clause, the current equalization system has to be renegotiated by the year 2019. Against this backdrop, this contribution studies the reform preferences of...

Federal states in Germany are characterized by low fiscal autonomy. Equalization systems in place balance revenue differences to a considerable extent and states cannot independently set taxes of any major relevance. Although these features of German federalism are notorious for their...

We investigate the political determinants of risk premiums which sub-national governments in Switzerland have to pay for their sovereign bond emissions. For this purpose we make use of financial market data from 288 tradable cantonal bonds in the period from 1981 to 2007. Our main focus is on...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

Numerical fiscal rules are implemented to counterbalance the deficit bias in budgetary policy. Over the recent years, an increasing number of studies try to test the actual effectiveness of fiscal rules. This meta-analysis condenses the existing evidence from different regional and federal...

Die in Deutschland ab dem Jahr 2012 geplante schrittweise Erhöhung des Renteneintrittsalters von 65 auf 67 Jahre scheint innerhalb der Bevölkerung wenig populär zu sein. Existierende Studien, die Determinanten von Rentenreformwiderständen untersuchen, fokussieren vor allem auf...

Die im Zusammenhang mit der Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise in vielen Ländern angestiegenen Risikoprämien für Staatsanleihen belasten die nationalen Haushalte. Ungeachtet notwendiger Konsolidierungserfordernisse stellt sich die Frage, welche institutionellen Maßnahmen geeignet sind, dieser...

We estimate the effects of income from various sources on charitable giving using administrative German income tax data. We demonstrate that charitable contributions are not uniformly affected by different income types. While business and capital income exhibit a positive effect, the remaining...