Die deutsche Schuldenbremse wird als Investitionsbremse kritisiert. Fraglich ist insbesondere, ob die Schuldenbremse bei konjunkturellen Schwankungen im Regelfall genügend Spielraum für eine antizyklische Kreditaufnahme lässt. Volkswirtschaftlich wichtige öffentliche Investitionen könnten...

In most rich democracies one finds a tendency for the share in public finance that is available for discretionary spending to shrink. This is because tax revenues do not keep pace with simultaneous increases in fixed expenditures and growing pressures for fiscal consolidation. The present paper...

The new German government plans to increase investment spending considerably, yet without increasing taxes or reforming the debt brake enshrined in the constitution. This article explores the government’s (un)conventional approaches to squaring this circle.

In 2009, Germany invested 15.4 Billion Euro in infrastructure to avert the looming recession. In this study, we evaluate whether the German stimulus program was successful in limiting the impact of the crisis on the job market. We exploit exogenous cross-sectional variation to identify the...

This paper analyzes recent macroeconomic developments in the eurozone, particularly in Germany. Several economic indicators are sending signals of a looming German recession. Geopolitical tensions caused by trade disputes between the United States and China, plus the risk of a disorderly Brexit,...

May 2022 marked the 90th anniversary of the end of Heinrich Brüning’s term as Reich Chancellor. To this day, the economic effects of Brüning’s extreme austerity measures remain unclear. However, new data and calculations have made an initial quantification of the economic consequences of...