Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008, interpreted by some observers as a foreseeable failure of "unfettered" capitalism, the German intellectual tradition of ordoliberalism has been meeting with increased interest. Its emphasis on good government, appropriate rules and institutions...

This paper analyzes the impact of fiscal federalism on income inequality and redistribution. Economic theory delivers contradicting arguments such that empirical evidence is needed to shed light on the relationship. To obtain such evidence, we rely on the ideal institutional setting of...

Vincent Ostrom's legacy is revisited in this paper along three dimensions: Ostrom's contributions as a historian of politico-economic thought, as a complexity theorist, and as an epistemologist. All three dimensions are captured from a perspective which has seldom been studied systematically...

Defekte Schultoiletten und gesperrte Brücken haben in Deutschland eine neue Debatte um eine öffentliche Investitionsschwäche ausgelöst. Eine Erhöhung der öffentlichen Investitionsquote wird dabei oftmals als Allheilmittel zur Stärkung der Wirtschaft gesehen. Vielfach wird sogar eine...

The Swiss debt brake is widely appreciated as one of the most rationally designed fiscal rules in the world and was thus also discussed as blueprint in the debates about fiscal rules in Germany, the European Union member states and Israel. However, evidence that this rule really contributes to...

Sales from businesses to consumers provide fertile ground for collaborative tax evasion. However, little is known about the phenomenon. We conduct a natural field experiment with 2,900 businesses in which we take the role of consumers and vary if we request an invoice for the delivery of a...

James Buchanan pioneered the political economics of public debt 60 years ago. In this paper, we contrast his thinking of the burden of debt, the public choice mechanisms that lead to excessive debt and the demand for constitutional restraints on public debt with its development, its...

Germany's approach to solving the Eurozone crisis is supposedly based on the ideas of Walter Eucken (1891–1950), the founder of ordoliberalism. In this and other contexts, Eucken's work has been described as being in direct opposition to that of John Maynard Keynes. Our paper aims to clarify...