This paper investigates the political economy of after merger effects of the large scale municipal amalgamations in the German state of Baden-W¨urttemberg in the early 1970s. By exploiting the huge variance in the amalgamation process in terms of number of participating municipalities,...

We analyze the sustainability of public finances in the 16 states (Laender) of the Federal Republic of Germany using an unprecedentedly comprehensive fiscal dataset covering the period from 1950 to 2011 for West German Laender and from 1991 to 2011 for East German Laender. As we apply unit root...

Das Konzept des sogenannten "liberalen" oder "libertären" Paternalismus wird in der akademischen Debatte zunehmend kontrovers diskutiert und findet gleichzeitig immer mehr das Interesse politischer Praktiker. Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass es sich beim neuen Paternalismus nicht um ein...

Das Konzept des sogenannten »liberalen« oder »libertären« Paternalismus wird in der akademischen Debatte zunehmend kontrovers diskutiert und findet gleichzeitig immer mehr das Interesse politischer Praktiker. Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass es sich beim neuen Paternalismus nicht um ein...

In the history of economic thought Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact in establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. Even though there is a growing interest in his ideas especially from an Austrian and a Constitutional Economics perspective, his influence on the...

In den letzten Jahren hat sich ein breiter Literaturstrang etabliert, der neue Formen paternalistischer Interventionen vorschlägt, um individuelle Entscheidungen zu verbessern, die nicht vollständig rational sind. Die Motivation hierfür liegt in zahlreichen Verhaltensanomalien und anderen...

The distinct characteristic in James Buchanan's thinking about federalism in contrast to the traditional theory of fiscal federalism is his view about fiscal competition. In this paper, it is demonstrated that this thinking went through three stages. From the 1950s to the beginning of the 1970s,...

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...

This paper argues that an evolutionary approach to policy-making, which emphasizes openness to change and political variety, is particularly compatible with the central tenets of classical liberalism. The chief reasons are that classical liberalism acknowledges the ubiquity of uncertainty, as...

In the history of economic thought Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact in establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. Even though there is a growing interest in his ideas especially from an Austrian and a Constitutional Economics perspective, his influence on the...