Kirchgässner Gebhard

For about 45 years, vote and popularity functions have been estimated for many countries indi-cating that voting intentions as well as actual votes are influenced by economic development. The economy is, of course, not the only and probably...

On July 5, this year, Swiss citizens will decide about the introduction of an unconditional basicincome. It should amount to 2'500 CHF per mo nth for adults and 625 CHF for children. Total expenditure would be about 200 Billion CHF, a pa rt...

This paper discusses several problems of direct popular decisions. In the first part, we consid-er problems related to the functioning of direct democracy. As a political system it only makes sense if there exists a continuous process and n...

Whether democracy or capitalism should have normative priority depends on the philosophi-cal point of view but also how both are defined. The more rele vant perspective is, however, the positive one. Formally, politics dominate, bu t the ec...

First the assumption of self-interest as applied in Economics is presented. Here we also discuss areasin which (many) people behave less self- but more other-regarding than traditional economic models assume. Then, greedy behaviour is consi...

Whenever the economic model of behaviour is to be applied, the utility function has – at leastsomewhat – to be specified. Buchanan generally prefers to apply a rather narrow version. However, he acknowledges that it is hardly possible t...

In Switzerland, a constitutional initiative has been launched to introduce an unconditionalbasic income. It should amount to 2'500 CHF per month for adults and 625 CHF for children. Total expenditure would be 200 Billion CHF, of which 50 Bi...

Provided that the literature on th e deterrent effect of capital punishment is overall inconclu-sive, the fact that individual au thors persistently claim to have found solid evidence in one or the other direction raises two questions. Firs...

Paternalism is an attempt to influence the decisions of individuals for their own benefit even ifthere are no third parties involved. This seems to be a contradiction to normative individualism which provides the general or ientation of our...

In Switzerland, political concordance or direct popular rights and the resulting consociationaldemocracy are often held responsible for delay or even cancellation of necessary political reforms. Switzerland is, however, not the only country...

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that each execution saves morethan 70 lives. This example is used to show how easy it is, using simple or advanced econometric techniques, to produce results that do or do not s...

First, the points of view of economists regarding falsificationism, scientific revolutions andscientific research programmes are discussed. Next, hardly debatable scientific progress regarding empirical economic research in recent decades i...

After a short sketch of the history of modern business schools in the German speaking countries,their four major activity fields are considered: (i) academic teaching, (ii) scientific research, (iii) consulting and (iv) executive education....

The current debt crisis in many OECD countries calls for adequate strategies in budget consolidation.To regain fiscal solvency many governments base their fiscal adjustments at least partly on spending cuts. A common political claim is that...

After some theoretical considerations, fiscal institutions called ?debt brakes? designed to preventpublic deficit and debt from going off course, are discussed. We first present some models applied in some Swiss cantons, especially in the c...

Using Swiss data from 1983 to 2008, this paper investigates whether growth rates of the differentmeasures of the quantity of money and or excess money can be used to forecast inflation. After a preliminary data analysis, money demand relati...

In comparing Switzerland and Germany, this paper discusses basic but potentially conflictingconstitutional principles and the problems which can arise from such conflicts and which have to be handled by a constitution. We concentrate on thr...

There is a basic tension between the principle of democracy and the rule of law. This becomesobvious whenever the Swiss citizens accept an initiative that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. First, we discuss the t...

Is the economic and financial crisis also a crisis of Economics? From different perspectives, today there is rather harsh criticism of Economics as a Social Science. In this paper, first, some of the recent failures of Economics are discuss...

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 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...

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...