We analyse the adjustment of public education spending in response to rapidly decreasing student cohorts in East Germany where birth rates collapsed after German reunification. Previous results from the literature based on data from more stable demographic periods suggest that public resources...

Most EU member states will adopt fiscal rules that refer to cyclically-adjusted borrowing limits. Under the standard cyclical adjustment procedure, trend increases in public debt based on cyclical components are prevented if the real-time output gaps used to calculate cyclical components balance...

What are the macroeconomic implications of re-allocating taxing rights away from source countries (where goods are produced) to market countries (where goods are consumed) and introducing minimum rates in international profit taxation? We assess this question in a dynamic macroeconomic model...

From an economic perspective, imposing a credible one-off net wealth levy in crisis times as a tool to ward off a national emergency appears to be advantageous as, in an ideal world, this would not distort market players’ allocation decisions. However, in practice, charging such a levy may...

Due to tight public budget constraints, the efficiency of publicly financed universities in Germany is receiving increasing attention in the academic as well as in the public discourse. Against this back ground we analyze the efficiency of 72 public German universities for the years 1998 - 2003,...

The paper examines the effects of demographic change on federal, state and local governments in Germany with a focus on the expenditure side to answer the question, whether demographic change will induce vertical fiscal expenditure imbalances. We present estimates of the impact of demographic...