After the flooding in 2002 European governments provided billions of Euros of financial assistance to their citizens. Although there is no doubt that solidarity and some sort of assistance is reasonable, the question arises why these damages were not sufficiently insured. One explanation why...

The paper compares the policy choices regarding risk-transfer against low-probability-high-loss events between elected and appointed public officials. Empirical evidence using data on U.S. municipality-level shows that appointed city managers are more likely to adopt federal risk-transfer...

Bestehende und anhaltende Handelshemmnisse in den internationalen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen werden in der Politischen Ökonomie des Protektionismus anhand der interdependenten Beziehung zwischen Nachfragern und Anbietern im politischen Markt für Protektion erklärt. Die politisch-institutionellen...

In diesem Beitrag wird untersucht, welche Faktoren die Vergabe von finanziellen Hilfeleistungen an die Länder der Dritten Welt bestimmen. Die positive Analyse stellt auf die Interessen und die Einflußmöglichkeiten der beteiligten Akteure im politischen Entscheidungsprozeß ab. Zwei...

Die steuerpolitischen Harmonisierungsziele der EG-Kommission stoßen in vielen Mitgliedslandern auf Skepsis und Widerstand, da aus ökonomischer Sicht mit einer Verlagerung von steuerpolitischen Kompetenzen auf die EG-Ebene einerseits Effizienzgewinne ebenso wie Effizienzverluste und...

Public choice theory provides arguments to explain why protectionism is prevalent all over the world. In this paper it is argued that even when citizens have the possibility to decide on trade barriers in direct democracy, tariffs are maintained or even increased. This result is traced to the...

This study focuses on the determinants of bilateral and multilateral aid given to developing countries. We try to model the allocation process of different types of foreign aid and derive testable hypotheses using the public choice framework. The decisive motives are identified by explicitly...

This paper compares alternative risk transfer mechanisms (insurance solutions) in three countries, which were affected by the flood event in August 2005, namely Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The comparison focuses on the ability of the institutional solutions to dampen economic shocks caused...

This paper contains an empirical analysis of income tax noncompliance in Switzerland, based on the standard model of tax evasion. Noncompliance is found to be positively related to the marginal tax burden and negatively to the probability of audit, though the latter impact is only weak. There is...

Andreoni (1993) has shown in an experimental study that crowding out is incomplete when an involuntary lump-sum tax is levied exogenously on individuals to finance the provision of a public good. In this paper, we (i) replicate Andreoni's experimental conditions, and (ii) introduce treatments...