FG VWL, insbesondere Mikroökonomik
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Prozesspolitik
(2020)
Public entrepreneurship is commonly understood as the outcome of the activities of a Schumpeterian political innovator. However, empirical research suggests that changes to a more efficient economic policy, even if it is known and technically easy to implement, are usually delayed. This is difficult to reconcile with Schumpeterian notions of public entrepreneurship. In this paper, it is argued that the attempt to transfer a Schumpeterian approach to the public sector is fundamentally flawed. Institutional checks and balances that characterise most modern liberal democracies make the strategy of bold leadership an unlikely choice for an incumbent. If change occurs, it occurs normally as a response to the fact that the status quo has become untenable. From a normative point of view, it is argued that if public entrepreneurship nevertheless occurs, it will often be associated with unwanted consequences. A dismantling of formal institutional checks and balances is therefore not reasonable.
Rational Ignorance Is Not Bliss: When Do Lazy Voters Learn from Decentralised Political Experiments?
(2008)
A popular argument about economic policy under uncertainty states that decentralisation offers the possibility to learn from local or regional policy experiments. Often, an analogy between market competition as a discovery procedure and political competition is used to corroborate this argument. We argue that political learning processes are not trivial and do not occur frictionlessly: Voters have an inherent tendency to retain a given stock of policy-related knowledge which was costly to accumulate, so that yardstick competition is improbable to function well particularly for complex issues, if representatives' actions are tightly controlled by the electorate. We show that factor mobility does have the potential to endogenously disturb equilibria on regional markets for political theories, and therefore does provide for improved political learning processes compared to unitary systems. But the results we can expect are far from the ideal mechanisms of producing and utilising knowledge often described in the literature. In particular, collective learning may occur in the relatively efficient region, while the status quo may be fortified in the relatively inefficient region.
Die Studie beginnt mit einer überblicksartigen Bestandsaufnahme der aktuell vorliegenden Gutachten zur Lausitz und ihrem Strukturwandel (Teil A). Es folgt ein breiter und dabei, soweit es die Datenlage erlaubt, auch möglichste feinkörniger Überblick über die aktuelle Situationder Lausitz und ihrer Teilräume (Teil B). Dieser Überblick ist gegliedert in die Bereiche Wirtschaftsstruktur und Wertschöpfung (Teil B.I), Arbeitsmarkt (Teil B.II), sowie Infrastruktur und Lebensraum (Teil B.III). Es folgen eine Analyse der Integration und Kooperationsmöglichkeiten im Dreiländereck (Teil C) sowie der Erreichbarkeit der relevanten Märkte aus der Region und der regionsüberschreitenden Beziehungen (Teil D). Darauf aufbauend werden die endogenen Potentiale der Lausitz und ihrer Teilräume wiederum so feinkörnig wie möglich analysiert (Teil E). Eine Diskussion von Stärken und Schwächen der Strukturpolitik in einzelnen anderen deutschen Regionen soll auf Fallstricke hinweisen und das Lernen aus erfolgreichen struktur-und regionalpolitischen Ansätzen ermöglichen (Teil F). Die Studie schließt mit einer zusammenfassenden Darstellung von Handlungsempfehlungen, die sich aus den zuvor durchgeführten Analysen ergeben, sowie von Ansätzen für die weitere Forschung (Teil G).
Die neuere ökonomische Forschung zur Steuerehrlichkeit geht nicht mehr davon aus, dass lediglich Steuerlasten und Strafandrohungen das Verhalten von Steuerzahlern bestimmen. Vielmehr wird berücksichtigt, dass Steuerzahler in gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen stehen, die Einfluss auf ihre Steuerehrlichkeit haben. In diesem Beitrag werden zentrale Ergebnisse der Literatur kurz präsentiert und Anregungen für eine effiziente Politik der Steuerdurchsetzung formuliert.
It is proposed that a more accurate prediction of tax evasion activity than in the standard portfolio-choice model can be derived even for risk-neutral individuals if psychological costs are considered. Contrary to earlier models integrating psychological costs they are systematically derived by assuming a relationship between psychological costs, taxpayer satisfaction with public policy and taxes evaded. A formal concept of legitimacy of public policies is introduced and it is shown that legitimacy influences evasion activity.
An explanation for tax morale based upon a simple model of psychological costs that depend on the perceived legitimacy of public policies is introduced. It is shown that empirically observed low levels of tax evasion can be explained even for a risk-neutral taxpayer with such a model. In a discussion of aggregate tax revenue, it is argued that tax revenue as a function of tax rates may differ fundamentally from the notorious Laffer curve. It is then necessary to look at the interaction of formal and informal institutions to predict the nominal tax rates chosen by a revenue maximizer.
The sociologist R. Dahrendorf has recently suggested that there is no and there ought to be no convergence of economic policies towards some common ideal model. On the contrary, he states that ‘diversity is […] at the very heart of a world that has abandoned the need for closed, encompassing systems’. It is shown in this paper that the Dahrendorf hypothesis is difficult to reconcile with orthodox economic approaches to economic policy-making. A perspective on policy-making that introduces either fundamental uncertainty or endogenous policy preferences or both is, however, shown to be consistent with the Dahrendorf hypothesis.
This paper surveys possible motivations for having a net wealth tax. After giving a short overview over the state of wealth taxation in OECD countries, we discuss both popular arguments for such a tax, as well as economic arguments. It is argued that classical normative principles of taxation known from public economics cannot give a sound justification for a net wealth tax. The efficiency-related effects are also discussed and shown to be theoretically ambiguous, while empirical evidence hints at a negative effect on GDP growth. Finally, it is argued that despite of widespread and persistent lobbying for a revitalization of the net wealth tax, this is unlikely to happen due to political economy constraints.
In contrast to the contractarian approach to constitutional economics, we follow Voigt (1999) in assuming that constitutional rules are closely connected to informal institutions and that their evolution is a matter of interest group activity and implicit re-interpretation. We add to this the assumption of theoretical uncertainty of individuals regarding the working properties of constitutional rules. Collective learning processes are considered as the third driving force of constitutional evolution, and at the same time as the source of path-dependencies which allow suboptimal constitutions to persist. Finally, it is argued that direct legislation offers more protection than a written fiscal constitution.