EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Federalism, Budget Deficits and Public Debt: On the Reform of Germany's Fiscal Constitution

Lars Feld and Thushyanthan Baskaran

Review of Law & Economics, 2010, vol. 6, issue 3, 365-393

Abstract: In 2009, new debt restrictions in the Grundgesetz (the German constitution) and in federal legislation passed both chambers of the German parliament by two-thirds majorities, imposing a more rigid debt regime on federal and Länder (states’) fiscal policies than previous constitutional provisions entailed. In this paper, the new provisions are evaluated against the background of the problems of German fiscal federalism that they are supposed to solve, as well as the possible solutions discussed in constitutional economics. We thereby mainly draw on recent evidence from Switzerland. This reform is an important step to remedy the shortcomings of German fiscal federalism, but we argue that it needs to be complemented by tax autonomy for the German Länder.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1555-5879.1537 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:6:y:2010:i:3:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/rle/html

DOI: 10.2202/1555-5879.1537

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Law & Economics is currently edited by Francesco Parisi

More articles in Review of Law & Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:6:y:2010:i:3:n:4