In many public policy areas, randomized policy experiments can greatly contribute to our knowledge of the effects of policies and can thus help to improve public policy. However, policy experiments are not very common. This paper studies whether a lack of appreciation for policy experiments...

Managing military operations across and between teams of partner nations remains a first-order challenge to security and development during conflict. NATO, under the umbrella of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), brought together troops from 28 countries to help enhance security...

Die Arbeit von Auten und Splinter (2024) ist der jüngste Beitrag einer andauernden Debatte zur Entwicklung von Einkommensungleichheit in den USA. In dieser Debatte werden primär die Arbeiten von Piketty und Koautoren zitiert. Die Ergebnisse von Auten und Splinter hinterfragen bisherige...

Bei der Finanzierung von Investitionen sind die Kommunen stark auf Fördermittel angewiesen. Diese werden über zahlreiche Programme verteilt, wobei die Länder eine maßgebliche Rolle spielen. Die empirische Forschung legt nahe, dass politische Verbindungen die Zuweisung dieser Mittel...

This paper explores whether professional macroeconomic forecasters manipulate their forecasts to influence voting outcomes. We model a referendum in which a voter chooses between two policies. The voter relies on a forecaster to learn about the macroeconomic consequences of the policies. The...

We study the effects of information on attitudes towards inheritance taxation using survey experiments fielded in Germany. We show that information about tax allowances increases demand for higher taxes and shifts public opinion from favoring abolition to supporting the tax. Effects are...

Rational choice theories assume that voters accurately assess the outcomes of policies. However, many important policies—such as regulating prices and introducing Pigouvian taxation—yield outcomes through indirect or equilibrium effects that may differ from their direct effects. Citizens may...

We examine the effects of endogenous sequences on the fairness in round-robin tournaments with four players, multiple prizes, and general contest technologies. A tournament is called horizontally ex-ante fair if symmetric contestants have the same expected payoffs (odds) before the tournament...

The observation of the remarkably stable development of inequality indicators in Germany in the relevant period suggests that it is unlikely that they represent a major explanatory factor for the rise of the AfD. Furthermore, in an EU comparison, the success of radical right-wing parties appears...

In recent years, agricultural policies have expanded their scope to include funding for the promotion of environmental sustainability in agriculture. However, these policies have been often overlooked in the political economy literature. This article aims to investigate the factors influencing...