A popular argument about economic policy under uncertainty states that decentralisation offers the possibility to learn from local or regional policy experiments. We argue that such learning processes are not trivial and do not occur frictionlessly: Voters have an inherent tendency to retain a...

The paper compares decision-making on the centralisation of public goods provision in the presence of regional externalities under representative and direct democratic institutions. A model with two regions, two public goods and regional spillovers is developed in which uncertainty over the true...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-) distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD...

[Schlussfolgerungen] Das Gesamtbild der Umsetzung des Fiskalpaktes in nationales Recht ist zu diesem Zeitpunkt durchwachsen. Einerseits ist es erfreulich, dass gerade von der Krise stark betroffene Länder wie Spanien und Portugal sehr ernsthafte und vielversprechende Regelungen verabschiedet...

We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-) distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

Public choice theory has originally been motivated by the need to correct the asymmetry, widespread in traditional welfare economics, between the motivational assumptions of market participants and policymakers: Those who played the game of politics should also be considered rational and...

[Conclusion] The overall picture of the current status of implementation of the Fiscal Compact into national law is rather ambiguous. On the one side, there are countries like Spain and Portugal, which have been severely affected by the Euro crisis, and appeared to have learned a lesson and...

[Schlussfolgerungen] Das Gesamtbild der Umsetzung des Fiskalpaktes in nationales Recht ist zu diesem Zeitpunkt durchwachsen. Einerseits ist es erfreulich, dass gerade von der Krise stark betroffene Länder wie Spanien und Portugal sehr ernsthafte und vielversprechende Regelungen verabschiedet...