Central to this paper has been the idea that there might be a demand on the part of the citizens for having specific decision-mechanisms in specific types of situations. This demand cannot be deduced on purely theoretical grounds, but rather should be registered case by case. Theory might help...

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

The ‘‘decentralization hypothesis’’ in the theory of fiscal federalism suggests that fiscal decentralization may have a dampening effect on government size, implying that government intrusion into the economy can be restricted if government responsibilities for taxes...

This study provides an answer to the question of how much cash deposited via a financial institution can be traced back to criminal activities, by developing a new approach to measure money laundering and proposing an application to Italy. We define a model of cash in‐flows on current accounts...

In der vergangenen Dekade hat Deutschland den Kampf gegen Schwarzarbeit und Steuerhinterziehung durch zahlreiche Maßnahmen verschärft. Doch sind Steuerhinterziehung und Schwarzarbeit in Deutschland tatsächlich so omnipräsent, wie die Bundesregierung immer wieder glauben machen will? Und wie...

In many empirical contingent valuation studies one finds that household size, i.e. the number of household members, is negatively correlated with stated household willingness to pay for the realization of environmental projects. This observation is rather puzzling because in larger households...

Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between rules and inflation is relatively weak. In this paper, we first discuss likely causes for this weak link and present the argument that monetary commitment...