The Euro in 2084

Schulden; Finanzmarktkrise; Euro; Schuldenkrise; Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion

Taxing Expats. Instrumental versus Expressive Voting Compared

It is common knowledge that mobile individuals are difficult to tax. Governments accommodate these difficulties by granting special tax reductions to mobile individuals as it is expedient to get some tax revenue from these individuals rather than to lose them as tax payers completely. Taxing according to expediency is, however, criticized by ordinary tax payers who claim that the basic principles of tax equity are consequently violated. Therefore governments have to solve a difficult trade off between the two goals in order to survive. The variables entering in this optimization process remain disguised in the normal case of a representative democracy. In a direct democracy, however, the trade-off between tax expediency and tax equity principles is revealed by voters.In this paper we distinguish between situations where voters vote instrumentally in favour of tax expediency and where voters vote expressively in favour of equity principles. A popular vote in the canton of Zurich of 2009 serves as a natural experiment for testing the instrumental versus expressive voter hypotheses. We find that instrumental voting prevails in small rural municipalities and expressive voting in larger cities. As expressive voters are in majority in the canton, they exert a cross border externality by imposing their will on the majority decisions of the smaller municipalities. This observation may be of a particular importance when, on the federal level, expressive urban voters may impose their will on the voters of rural cantons voting instrumentally.political economics of taxation

The Deadlock of the EU Budget: An Economic Analysis of Ways In and Ways Out

Most of the EU budget is spent on redistribution. Large sums of money are transferred from the member state governments to Brussels and back to these governments. Some member states end up as net receivers and some as net payers. Most economists agree that the resources of the budget should be reallocated from redistribution towards the provision of more Union-wide public goods. While such appeals have been made for years, little change has been observed. We want to explain why. We propose to distinguish two periods. In the early years of the Community, some larger member states or coalitions of member states were able to credibly threaten to terminate membership if their claims on budgetary resources were not fulfilled. Their activity has created a redistributive status quo to which, in the second period, the budgetary rules of the Treaty were applied. It is shown that the combination of the Council’s qualified majority rule on the expenditure side and the unanimity rule on the revenue side and on the programs are largely responsible for creating a deadlock in the status quo with large redistribution and few Union-wide public goods. In order to break the deadlock, a complementary budget procedure is proposed on the basis of voting by veto.

Wie könnten Abstimmungen auf Bundesebene geregelt werden?

Im Koalitionsvertrag von SPD und Grünen ist vereinbart worden, ein Volksentscheidgesetz in den Bundestag und Bundesrat einzubringen, um dem Verfassungsauftrag von Art. 20 Abs. 2 Grundgesetz Geltung zu verschaffen. Gegenwärtig arbeiten verschiedene Gremien an einem entsprechenden Gesetzentwurf. Was sollte dabei beachtet werden? --

Mehr direkte Demokratie auf Bundesebene? Zehn Vorurteile gegen Volksabstimmungen auf Bundesebene

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Der Euro 2084

Zahlungsbilanz, Zahlungsbilanzungleichgewicht, Schulden, Leistungsbilanz, Wettbewerb, Euro, Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion

Föderalismus, direkte Demokratie und Besteuerung: Eine Theorie der Schweiz

Die Schweiz wird oft als föderalistische Kuriosität und direktdemokratisches Unikum bezeichnet. Doch so lässt sich die Schweiz nicht verstehen. Es bedarf einer Theorie der Schweiz, wie Charles B. Blankart, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in seinem Beitrag darlegt. Wird die geographische Ausgangssituation als exogene Variable des Territoriums der Schweiz betrachtet, so wird die Entwicklung besser verständlich. Aus der fraktionierten Geographie haben sich die Institutionen des Föderalismus und der direkten Demokratie entwickelt, wie sie die Schweiz von heute charakterisieren. Obwohl im 20. Jahrhundert innenpolitische Zentralisierungstendenzen zu verzeichnen sind, haben die Gebietskörperschaften ihre Autonomie in der Schweiz wesentlich besser aufrechterhalten als in anderen Staaten. Eine wichtige Rolle spielt dabei die Schuldenselbstverantwortung von Bund, Kantonen und Gemeinden.

Regulation of new markets in telecommunications? Market dynamics and shrinking monopolistic bottlenecks

This paper aims at localizing network-specific market power in new markets. Three kinds of transmission qualities on service markets can be differentiated according to the products provided: narrowband services like PSTN/ISDN or GSM, semi high-speed broadband services like broadband internet access up to 6 Mbps download and VDSL services up to 50 Mbps. As long as, due to the absence of alternative network infrastructures, a monopolistic bottleneck in local infrastructure networks exists the question arises what the remaining bottleneck components are for these different markets. In this paper the shrinking-bottleneck hypothesis will be demonstrated. --

Soll die Exklusivlizenz der Deutschen Post AG verlängert werden?

Der Monopolbereich der Deutschen Post AG soll, wie im Postgesetz von 1997 vorgesehen, Ende des Jahres 2002 auslaufen. Nach den jüngsten Plänen der Bundesregierung soll jedoch die völlige Deregulierung des Postmarktes auf das Jahr 2008 verschoben werden. Wie ist diese Verschiebung zu beurteilen? --