Föderalismus und Dezentralisierung sind Themen, die weltweit einen festen Platz auf der politischen Agenda einnehmen. Dezentralisierungsprozesse treten bspw. verstärkt in zahlreichen osteuropäischen Staaten aber auch in Spanien, Belgien und in und vielen Entwicklungsländern auf. Diese...

This paper analyzes the e ffect of regional income inequality within countries on individual life satisfaction. We use data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Survey (EVS) containing approximately 97,000 observations from 1981-2008. Regional income inequality is measured...

Das vorliegende Gutachten liefert eine umfassende Analyse der Vor- und Nachteile revolvierender Fonds als Instrument zur Neuausrichtung der Förderpolitik. Dabei ist zwischen zwei Fragen zu trennen: Zum einen bieten Fonds die Möglichkeit der intertemporalen Optimierung von...

Das vorliegende Gutachten liefert eine umfassende Analyse der Vor- und Nachteile revolvierender Fonds als Instrument zur Neuausrichtung der Förderpolitik. Dabei ist zwischen zwei Fragen zu trennen: Zum einen bieten Fonds die Möglichkeit der intertemporalen Optimierung von...

Germany is the laggard of Europe, yet the country is world champion in merchandise exports. The paper tries to solve this theoretical and empirical puzzle by diagnosing a “pathological export boom” and a “bazaar effect”. Excessively high wages defended by unions and the welfare state...

Intergovernmental transfers can be either conditional or unconditional with regard to the autonomy of local governments in spending such financial means. Although fiscal decentralisation has recently been quite pronounced in Eastern European transition countries, the dominance of a purpose- and...

In this paper we present two new composite leading indicators of economicactivity in Germany estimated using a dynamic factor model with and withoutregime switching. The obtained optimal inferences of business cycle turningpoints indicate that the two-state regime switching procedure leads to...

The paper analyses the financial structure of German inward FDI. From a tax perspective, intra-company loans granted by the parent should be all the more strongly preferred over equity the lower the tax rate of the parent and the higher the tax rate of the German affiliate. From our study of a...

Legislative bargaining theory suggests that fiscal transfers among member states of a federation are determined to a substantial degree by political bargaining powers. Malapportionment of the states' population in the legislature is claimed to lead to disproportionally higher benefits to...

The data indicate that non-wage labour costs in Germany have reached a record high in recent years. From 1972 to 2001, the ratio of non-wage labour costs to direct compensation in West German manufacturing industry rose from 55.6 per cent to 81.2 per cent. The topic of non-wage labour costs is...