On the politicization of intergovernmental fiscal relations in Germany after unification

Friedrich Schneider (), Hans Pitlik, Harald Strotmann () and Günther Schmid
Additional contact information
Günther Schmid: State Ministry of Economics Baden-Württemberg, Germany

No 2001-05, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: A recent decision of the German Constitutional Court requires political decision makers to revise the system of intergovernmental transfers in order to limit free bargaining among state and federal government officials. The present paper provides empirical support for the thesis that political discretion has become increasingly important in the transfer negotiations after Unification. We attempt to show why political influences gained weight relative to economic considerations in the determination of net gains. This politicization of the fiscal transfer system appears to be a consequence of the inability of policy makers to agree on a fundamental reform in the early 1990's.

JEL-codes: D7 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2001/wp0105.pdf (application/pdf)

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:jku:econwp:2001_05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by René Böheim ().