We address empirically trust as a determinant of support for government intervention. The central notion provided in the present paper is that the influence of generalized social trust on intervention attitudes is conditional on the perceived reliability, honesty, and incorruptibility of state...

Which impact does government size have on life satisfaction, and how do effects of bigger government differ between income groups in society? Previous studies typically employed country averages and thus neglect possibly heterogeneous happiness effects between income groups. The paper addresses...

The purpose of this paper is to propose a general informal institution determining human ways of thinking and codes of behaviour, thus, in our case, individual support for the Welfare State. For that reason, we recommend employing the two closely related and complementary psychological concepts...

The introduction of decoupled direct payments in the EU was a substantial change of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2003. After decoupling direct payments from production, it has become evident that distributional objectives are the major justification of farm payments. There are three...

Recent research has shown that the degree to which people feel they are in control of their lives is an important correlate of individual happiness, where those that feel more in control are also found to be systematically happier. In turn, the economic sources of perceived life control are only...

This report collects and draws conclusions from research papers of Area 1. It summarises the results against the background of the existing literature, focusing in particular on the challenges arising on welfare states from globalisation, post-industrialisation, and demographic changes. The...

Nicht zuletzt durch den fortschreitenden Prozeß der europäischen Integration hat das wissenschaftliche Interesse an der Zuordnung finanzpolitischer Kompetenzen auf gebietskörperschaftliche Entscheidungsträger zugenommen. Während die traditionelle Theorie des Fiskalföderalismus auf die...