In Germany, the medium-term financial planning (Mifrifiʺ) was introduced at the end of the sixties. This study scrutinizes the experience of the German Bund with more than thirty years of financial planning. In the first step, the paper explores the potential normative and political-economic...

Although demographic change leaves pay-as-you-go pension systems unsustainable, reforms, such as a higher pension age, are highly unpopular. This contribution looks into the role of intrinsic motivation as a driver for pension reform acceptance. Theoretical reasoning suggests that this driver...

German municipalities are expected to suffer from (often significant) population losses in the upcoming decades. We assess these local governments' vulnerability to the fiscal consequences of this demographic decline through two means (using a sample of 1021 municipalities in the state of...

Highly progressive tax systems entail disincentives for private economic activity and, thus, may hamper potential growth. Nevertheless, attempts to introduce alternative tax schedules regularly encounter significant political resistance. The aim of this paper is to widen the understanding of the...

Changes to the degree of a tax system’s progressiveness are a key element of many introduced or considered tax reforms. Especially, flat tax reforms have received increasing attention resulting from their popularity among Eastern European countries. Proponents claim that their simplicity and...

We analyze politicians’ expectations about future compliance with a fiscal rule, and in particular the dependence of the expectations on their role in parliament (opposition vs. incumbent government coalition). We study this in the context of the German debt brake, which became a...