FG VWL, insbesondere Mikroökonomik
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Scientific journal article peer-reviewed (37) (remove)
Way of publication
- Open Access (1)
Keywords
- Economic policy (2)
- Fiscal federalism (2)
- Formal institutions (2)
- Informal institutions (2)
- Paternalismus (2)
- Redistribution (2)
- Social norms (2)
- Tax evasion (2)
- Tax morale (2)
- collective learning (2)
- Academic journals (1)
- Anti-terrorism policies (1)
- Behavioral political economics (1)
- Behavioral political economy (1)
- Bryce Law (1)
- Centralisation (1)
- Centralization (1)
- Classical liberalism (1)
- Cognitive biases (1)
- Cognitive dissonance (1)
- Collective beliefs (1)
- Collective learning (1)
- Constitutional economics (1)
- Creative destruction (1)
- Cultural evolution (1)
- Darwinism (1)
- Deterrence (1)
- Diffusion of innovations (1)
- Direct democracy (1)
- Electoral systems (1)
- Evolution (1)
- Expressive behavior (1)
- Fairness (1)
- Federalism (1)
- Fiscal decentralization (1)
- Fiscal referendums (1)
- Government Centralization (1)
- Grants in aid (1)
- H26 (1)
- Happiness (1)
- Income distribution (1)
- Industriepolitik (1)
- Inequality (1)
- Innovation (1)
- Innovation Policy (1)
- Innovationspolitik (1)
- Institutional Evolution (1)
- Institutional evolution (1)
- Justice (1)
- Knowledge spillovers (1)
- Libertarian paternalism (1)
- Life satisfaction (1)
- Model uncertainty (1)
- National Champions (1)
- Nationale Industriestrategie (1)
- Ordnungsökonomik (1)
- Paternalism (1)
- Peer review policy (1)
- Policy decentralisation (1)
- Political ideology (1)
- Popitz Law (1)
- Presidential and parliamentary regimes (1)
- Property rights (1)
- Public good provision (1)
- Rational irrationality (1)
- Reciprocity (1)
- Regional growth (1)
- Representative democracy (1)
- Research and development (1)
- Schumpeterian political economy (1)
- Scientific publishing (1)
- Soft paternalism (1)
- Sour grapes (1)
- State and Local Autonomy (1)
- Structural Change (1)
- Structural change (1)
- Strukturwandel (1)
- Subjective well-being (1)
- Terrorism (1)
- Verhaltensökonomik (1)
- Voting (1)
- World Values Survey (1)
- Z13 (1)
- economic performance (1)
- economics and psychology (1)
- expressives Verhalten (1)
- fiscal competition (1)
- fiscal decentralization (1)
- fiscal federalism (1)
- growth (1)
- inequality (1)
- inkonsistente Präferenzen (1)
- model uncertainty (1)
- nationale Champions (1)
- net wealth tax (1)
- path-dependent rule-evolution (1)
- political innovation (1)
- political legitimacy (1)
- positive constitutional economics (1)
- public entrepreneurship (1)
- redistribution (1)
- reform processes (1)
- wealth (1)
Institute
The peer review system in academic publishing performs two important functions by screening a manuscript for its quality, and by helping to further improve an author's work. However, it often fails to perform these functions in a satisfactory manner. We argue that property rights theory can be fruitfully applied to understand these shortcomings, and to develop reform proposals. The present paper discusses the incentive-problems in journal peer review from an institutional economics perspective, arguing that the incentives of both authors and reviewers to fully exploit a manuscript's potential depend on their property rights. Based on this theory of peer review, we argue that the recent proposal of an “as is” review policy combined with increased accountability of referees can be expected to result in a higher efficiency of peer review.
We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-)distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD countries between 1981 and 1998. The evidence indicates that presidential regimes are associated with a less equal distribution of disposable incomes, while electoral systems have no significant effects. Fiscal competition is associated with less income redistribution and a less equal distribution of disposable incomes, but also with a more equal primary income distribution. Our evidence also is in line with earlier empirical contributions that find a positive relationship between trade openness and equality in primary and disposable incomes, as well as the overall redistributive effort.
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.
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.