How do global political shocks influence individuals' expectations about economic outcomes? We run a unique survey on inflation expectations among 145 tenured economics professors in Germany and exploit the 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine as a natural experiment to identify the effect of a...

The beauty premium in politics shows that attractive politicians are more likely to get elected to office than less attractive politicians, but little is known about whether beauty also shapes the behavior of members of parliament (MPs) once in office. We use newly collected data on the...

The nexus between corruption and economic growth has been examined for a long time. Many empirical studies measured corruption by the reversed Transparency International's Perception of Corruption Index (CPI) and ignored that the CPI was not comparable over time. The CPI is comparable over time...

We examine partisan bias in inflation expectations. Our dataset includes inflation expectations of the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations over the period June 2013 to June 2018. The results show that inflation expectations were 0.46 percentage points higher in Republican-dominated...

A widespread concern is that labor market institutions erode in the course of globalization, which, in turn, decreases employment and wages. By using panel data and crosssectional data, I investigate the influence of globalization on labor market regulation. I use the indicators of labor market...

We investigate empirically how party ideology influences size and scope of government as measured by the size of government, tax structure and labor market regulation. Our dataset comprises 49 US states over the 1993-2009 period. We employ the new data onthe ideological mapping of US...

Fiscal sustainability tests have largely ignored the institutional setting of fiscal policy making. Fiscal equalization schemes in federal states are one such institution. We examinewhether German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking intoaccount fiscal equalization...

In January 2005 the German Supreme Court permitted the state governments to chargetuition fees. By exploiting the natural experiment, we examine how government ideologyinfluenced the introduction of tuition fees. The results show that rightwing governmentswere active in introducing tuition fees....

I investigate minority votes in the German Council of Economic Experts. The dataset contains information on the voting behavior of the council members over the period 1971-2011. The results show that the best predictor of minority voting is being nominated by the trade unions: a council member...

Deutschland wurde bereits zweimal, 1966–1969 und 2005–2009, von einer großen Koalition regiert. Deskriptive Zeitreihenanalysen wirtschaftspolitischer Kennzahlen zeigen nicht auf, dass es unter diesen großen Koalitionen signifikante Kurswechsel in der Wirtschaftspolitik gab. Qualitative...