Feld Lars P.

This study investigates the determinants of economists’ life satisfaction. The analysis isbased on a survey of professional, mostly academic economists from European countries and beyond. We find that certain features of economists’ pro...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mi...

The paper explores whether a social learning model helps explain the observed conformity and compliance with social norms after the unification of Germany. We compare tax morale, (the willingness to pay taxes), between inhabitants of East a...

In a centralized federation, where tax rates and taxation rules are set by the federal govern-ment, manipulating the thoroughness of tax auditing and the effectiveness of tax collection could be attractive for regional authorities because o...

A common political claim is that decentralized governments undermine policy makers? ability to fight fiscal imbalance. This paper examines how different fiscal institutions influence the likeli-hood of a successful fiscal adjustment. Using ...

This paper provides a comparison of tax morale between inhabitants of East and West Germany in its post-reunification period, using three World Values Survey/European Values Survey waves between 1990 and 1999. The setting of German reunific...

There is an intensive dispute in political economics about the impact of institutions on income redistribution. While the main focus is on comparison between different forms of representative democracy, the influence of direct democracy on ...

The impact of regulatory competition on policy outcomes and particularly on policy innova-tion is widely debated among scientists from different fields as well as among policymakers. In this paper, Swiss cantonal regulation is studied in or...

The Swiss fiscal system is characterised by an extensive fiscal federalism with high fiscal autonomy at all governmental levels, by direct popular rights which include fiscal referenda at the cantonal and local levels, and by particular con...

This paper analyzes the impact of rewards on tax compliance as an additional instrument to take into account. While social psychologists and neuroscientists have emphasized the importance of rewards, the tax compliance literature has strong...

The traditional economic approach to tax evasion does not appear to be particularly successful in explaining the extent of tax compliance. We argue instead that a psychological tax contract which establishes a fiscal exchange between the st...

In this paper, we develop the concept of a psychological tax contract that goes beyond the traditional deterrence model and explains tax morale as a complicated interaction between taxpayers and the government. Based on crowding theory, the...

Recent empirical literature has shown that the determination of intergovernmental grants is highly influenced by the political bargaining power of the recipient states. In these models federal politicians are assumed to buy the support of s...

Three topics of a European constitution are discussed. First, basic arguments from constitutional political economy that aim at restricting representatives? potential misuse of powers in a European Union with extended competencies are summa...

Tax competition is discussed as a source of inefficiency in international taxation and in fiscal federalism. Two preconditions for the existence of such effects of tax competition are that mobile fac-tors locate or reside in jurisdictions w...

We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to occur in jurisdictions with referendum decisions on policy cen-tralization. Citizens choose centralization of public spending and revenue in...

Law backed by non-deterrent sanctions (mild law) has been hypothesized to achieve compliance because of norm activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild law in the provision of public goods by comparing it to severe law (d...

How a sustainable fiscal policy can be performed in a federal system is not only a Swiss prob-lem but is also discussed in other federal countries like Germany and Austria, and in the European Union. Contrary to most other countries, the Sw...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate t...