Publications of the Research Unit Corporate Taxation and Public Finance

  1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 23-007 // 2023

    Transparency and Policy Competition: Experimental Evidence From German Citizens and Politicians

    A lack of transparency about policy performance can pose a major obstacle to welfare-enhancing policy competition across jurisdictions. In parallel surveys with German citizens and state parliamentarians, we…

  2. Discussion and Working Paper // 2023

    What Are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials

    While effective bureaucracy is crucial for state capacity, its decision-making remains a black box. We elicit preferences of 900+ real-world public procurement officials in Finland and Germany. This is an…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-063 // 2022

    Measuring Democracy

    This short article contributes to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice by summarizing the literature on the measurement of democracy. I proceed in two step. In the first part, I describe the classical…

  4. Discussion and Working Paper // 2022

    Procuring Survival

    We investigate the impact of public procurement spending on business survival. Using Italy as a laboratory, we construct a large-scale dataset on firms---covering balance-sheet, income-statement, and…

  5. Discussion and Working Paper // 2022

    Elites and Health Infrastructure Improvements in Industrializing Regimes

    We collect information about more than 5,000 Prussian politicians, digitize administrative data on the provision of health-promoting public goods, and gather local-level information on workers’ movements to…