This paper empirically analyses the relationship between political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds and public budget deficits utilising panel data on 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. Building on sociological, as well as economic, research, we argue that the socioeconomic status of...

The poor state of public finances in many countries has led to calls for fiscal consolidation. In practice, implementing concrete consolidation measures appears to meet with public resistance, suggesting that the success of consolidation efforts strongly depends on the popularity of the chosen...

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between certain characteristics of incumbent central bank governors and their interest-rate-setting behavior. We focus on (i) occupational backgrounds, (ii) party affiliation, and (iii) experience in office and estimate augmented Taylor rules for 20...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2013. The survey addresses important topics in fiscal policy, including: 1) public preferences on the...

In this paper, we empirically assess how economic sanctions imposed by the UN and the US affect the target states' GDP growth. Our sample includes 68 countries and covers the period 1976 - 2012. We find that sanctions imposed by the UN have a statistically and economically significant influence...

In response to the recent sovereign debt crisis, the member states of the European Union agreed to enact balanced budget rules in their national legislation. However, little is known about the public's opinion of balanced budget rules. To fill this gap, we conducted a survey among 2,000...

Employing data from a representative survey conducted in Germany, this paper examines public preferences for the size and composition of government expenditure. We focus on public attitudes toward taxes, public debt incurrence, and public spending in six different policy areas. Our findings...

In this paper, we analyze the effect of US economic sanctions on the target countries' poverty gap during the period 1978 - 2011. Econometrically, we employ a nearest neighbor matching approach to account for differences in the countries' economic and political environment and the likelihood of...

This paper empirically evaluates the economic performance of U.S. state governors who came to the position from a business background (CEO governors), focusing on the growth rate of real personal income per capita, unemployment rate, and income inequality. Methodologically, we apply a matching...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2018. The survey covers various topics, including: 1) attitudes towards asylum seekers; 2) migrating workers in...