Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and euro area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology, and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the...

We study a fiscal policy model in which the government is present-biased, leading to an excessive public deficit. An optimally designed fiscal rule needs to trade off the benefit of committing the government to not overspend against the benefit of granting it flexibility to react to shocks to...

Mobility of high-income individuals across borders puts pressure on governments to lower taxes. A central tenet of the corresponding textbook argument is that mobile individuals react to tax differentials through migra- tion, and in turn immobile individuals vote for lower taxes. We investigate...

Zum dritten Mal haben das ZEW Mannheim und die Universität Mannheim alle 16 deutschen Landesparlamente zur Schuldenbremse befragt. Dieses langfristige Umfrage-Projekt wird durch den von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft geförderten Sonderforschungsbereich 884 "Die politische Ökonomie von...

The OECD's proposal for a global minimum tax (GMT) of 15% aims for a reversal of a decline of corporate tax rates. We study the revenue effects of the GMT by focusing on strategic tax setting effects. The direct effect from less profit shifting increases revenues in high-tax countries. A...

The geopolitical rivalry between the US and China may spill over to Europe via extraterritorial sanctions. The US-Iran conflict shows that Europe losing access to the US market has been a powerful threat to limit Europe's trade with Iran. US extraterritorial sanctions, seen as a tool to limit...

Many political issues like abortion, gay marriage or assisted suicide are strongly contested because individuals have preferences not only over their own choice but also about other individuals' actions. The paper models and compares the equilibria of three institutional regimes (ranging from...

The process of globalization has an important impact on national tax policies. Most of the literature does not focus directly on the political decision making process and assumes that the desired tax policy is responding to objective underlying tradeoffs. Based on an original survey of members...