This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2018. The survey covers various topics, including: 1) attitudes towards asylum seekers; 2) migrating workers in...

Is government ideology important for fiscal policy? I study this question with data from all German States over the period 1975-2005. To identify the effect of ideology, I rely on a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. I find that left-wing state governments spend more than state governments...

This paper studies the importance of politician's qualification, in terms of education and experience, for fiscal outcomes. The analysis is based on a large panel for 2,031 German municipalities for which we have collected information on municipal budgets as well as the election results and...

Senior officials in the ministerial bureaucracy are responsible for the coordination of public service activity and their number has grown enormously since World War II. We study the growth in employment of this politically sensitive high-profile occupational group from a political economics...

Die Umsetzung von EU-Recht in die innerstaatliche Rechtsordnung kann die Haushalte von Bund und Ländern erheblich belasten. Um derartige finanzielle Auswirkungen zu ermitteln, werden die in Gesetzentwürfen veranschlagten Staatsausgaben für Rechtsakte der EU über einen Zeitraum von 30 Jahren...

I use event study and synthetic control methods on a panel of American states over the period 1960 -- 2008 to test whether adoption of a supermajority requirement impacts state-level expenditures and tax revenue. I find evidence that supermajority requirements lead to a sustained reduction in...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2018. The survey covers various topics, including: 1) attitudes towards asylum seekers; 2) migrating workers in...

The paper investigates the fiscal effects of Swiss cantonal debt brakes by taking explicitly into account the rules' coverage. An in-depth analysis provides unique evidence that suggests the following: First, fiscal rules at the cantonal level have a negative effect on public deficits, which is...

We examine the relationship between legislature size and several components of government spending using a methodology that allows us to estimate how legislature size influences the fiscal response to shocks that are common to all states. We find little evidence that states with larger than...

In 2009 a new law on German debt brakes was passed: state governments are not allowed to run structural deficits after 2020. Consolidation strategies initiated today influence if a state can comply with the debt brake in 2020. We describe to what extent government ideology predicts if state...