Schaltegger Christoph A.

Based on probit estimates, this paper analyzes the effects of fiscal consolidation on the prob-ability of sovereign defaults in the short run. Using a panel of 104 developing countries from 1980 to 2009 and controlling for various economic,...

After more than five years have passed since the start of the global financial crisis,many European countries are still suffering from financial instability, surging sover- eign debt, economic stagnation or decline, high unemploym ent and p...

We provide empirical evidence on the impact of personal income taxes and taxcompetition on income concentration in Switzerland. The fact that Swiss cantons have considerable taxing power enables us to study the effect of differences in the ...

In this study of the persistent social phenomenon of suicide, we find that eventhough theological and social differences between Catholicism and Protestantism have decreased, Catholics are still less likely than Protestants to commit or acc...

We study the income concentration in the Swiss federation over the course of the 20th centuryusing federal income tax statistics. The results suggest that top incomes in Switzerland evolved over time rather remaining constant across differe...

Is income equality a precondition for higher school performance and higher educational mobility?Or is the opposite true? We test empirically whether school performance and intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is dependin...

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...

Zur Konjunkturstabilisierung haben Regierungen und Notenbanken in den Jahren 2008 und2009 schnell und entschlossen mit Impulsprogrammen reagiert. Die erhoffte Wirkung blieb nicht aus, indessen wurden mit den staatlichen Eingriffen neue Prob...

We use a panel of 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009 to investigate the effects of different fiscal adjustment strategies on long-term interest rates ? a key fiscal indicator reflecting the costs of government debt service. A government co...

Dieses Papier untersucht die Stabilisierungswirkung der Schweizer Fiskalpolitik. Erstens zeigtsich, dass in etwa 60% der Fälle die verfolgte Fiskalpolitik des Bundes antizyklisch wirkte. In Rezessionen wirkte die Fiskalpolitik des Bundes i...

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the influence of income taxes on the choiceof residence of taxpayers at the local level. The fact that Swiss communities can individually set tax multipliers thereby shifting the progressive ...

This paper investigates spatial spillovers in local spending decisions between the center and the surrounding local communities by using panel data of the canton of Lucerne during the 1990s. Due to the geographical fragmentation with a majo...

This comment makes a contribution to Becker and Woessmann?s paper on a human capital theory of Protestant economic history eventually challenging the famous thesis by Max Weber who attributed economic success to a specific Protestant work e...

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is also a bottom-up approach such as, for example, decentralizing the political power to those who are close to ...

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...

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 ...

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is also a bottom-up approach: decentralizing the political power to those who are close to the problems and give...

ax morale has received a growing attention in academics as well as in public life. The relevance of tax morale for fiscal policy cannot be neglected as tax morale can help to explain the level of tax compliance or tax evasion. This paper gi...

The intention of this paper is to analyse how audit courts and local autonomy affect political discussion, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a broad variety of potential factors focusing on Switzerland, due to its variety of audit ...

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...

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...

Citizens are willing to abandon their short-term financial interest in free-riding considerably, if governments act in their interest, if procedures of the public decisions-making process are felt to be fair and if other fellow-citizens hav...

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the relationship between government size and economic growth. But the empirical evidence of growth effects of public expenditure using cross-country regres-sions is still inconclusive. Acco...

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...

This paper investigates spatial spillovers in local spending decisions by using panel data of the Swiss communes in the canton of Lucerne during the 1990s. Due to the geographical fragmentation with a major central city and some 100 suburba...