This paper presents a novel theoretical framework to explain the occurrence of corruption in public procurement. It extends the agency cost-padding model by Laffont and Tirole (1992) to allow for the principal to be a partially selfish politician who can design the contract auditing policy. It is found that a benevolent politician, by choosing a sufficiently strict auditing, deters the contracting ...
We analyse the political economy of the public provision of private goods when individuals care about their social status. Status concerns motivate richer individuals to vote for the public provision of goods they themselves buy in markets: a higher provision level attracts more individuals to the public sector, enhancing the social exclusivity of market purchases. Majority voting may lead to a public ...
We estimate the dynamic effects of government spending shocks, using time-varying volatility in US data modeled through a Markov switching process. We find that the average government spending multiplier is significantly and persistently above one, driven by a crowding-in of private consumption and non-residential investment. We rationalize the results empirically through a contemporaneously countercyclical ...
As the German constitution aims for equal living conditions, a huge number of political measures to enhance the conditions in the new states were undertaken after unification (known as the “Aufbau Ost”). In the new states, expenditure per capita rose significantly over the average expenditure of the old states and their municipalities and huge budget deficits occurred. Beginning in the mid-1990s, expenditure ...
To finance resolution funds, the regulatory toolkit has been expanded in many countries by bank levies. In addition, these levies are often designed to reduce incentives for banks to rely excessively on wholesale funding resulting in high leverage ratios. At the same time, corporate income taxation biases banks’ capital structure towards debt financing in light of the deductibility of interest on debt. ...
This article summarises the key findings from a counterfactual exercise where the effect of removing repo assets from the leverage ratio on banks’ default probabilities is considered. The findings suggest that granting such an exemption may have adverse effects on the stability of the financial system, even when measures are introduced to compensate for the decline in capital required by the leverage ...
Europe and Germany are being hit by a historic shock due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Economic activity is going to shrink substantially this year, with lockdown measures having led to sharp contractions in economic output, household spending, corporate investment and international trade. Will we see a strong and sustainable recovery? Investment is central to reboot economic activity and to...