This paper investigates the behavior of rent-seeking politicians in an environment of increasing economic integration. The focus of the paper is on the implications of globalization-induced political yardstick competition for constitutional design with a view to the current discussion in the...

Modern societies are characterized by competing organizations that rely predominantly on incentive schemes to align the behavior of their members with the organizations’ objectives. This study contributes to explaining why in so many cases incentive schemes have gradually crowded out...

Why is it that, in democracies, the poor do not expropriate the rich even though they outnumber them? In this paper we analyze the commonly held belief that the rich escape expropriation because they are economically powerful. We demonstrate that the economically powerful, i.e. the above-average...

This paper investigates empirically the influence of government ideology on social policy using German data. Examining the funding and the benefits of social security and public healthcare policy, my results suggest that policies implemented by governments dominated by left- and rightwing...

We examine how electoral motives influence active labor market policies that promote (short term) job-creation. Such policies reduce measures of unemployment. Using German state data for the period 1985 to 2004, we show that election-motivated politicians pushed job-promotion schemes before...

My empirical results in Potrafke (<CitationRef CitationID="CR27">2012</CitationRef>) confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results—and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study,...</citationref>