Delay as a Political Technique under Divided Government? Empirical Evidence from Germany, 1976–2005

Is Divided Government A Cause of Legislative Delay?

Despite the compelling theoretical prediction that divided government decreases legislative performance, the empirical literature has struggled to identify a causal effect. We suspect that a combination of methodological challenges and data limitations are to blame. Here, we revisit this empirical relationship. Rather than relying on traditional measures of legislative productivity, however, we...

Political Connectedness and Firm Performance: Evidence From Germany

This paper investigates politically connected firms in Germany. With the introduction of a new transparency law in 2007, information on additional income sources for all members of the German parliament became publicly available. We find that members of the conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the liberal party (FDP) are more likely to work for firms than members of left-wing parties (SPD and The L...

A Theory of Divided Government

Explaining reurbanization: Empirical evidence of intraregional migration as a long-term mobility decision from Germany

Following the discussion on reurbanization (changing intra-regional migration patterns), our research project treats transport-related consequences of this spatial development in German city regions. The hypothesis is that reurbanization bears potential to spread environmentally friendly ways of organizing daily mobility – but that the chance of those positive effects might be given away, if po...

Political Parties and Optimum Government Financing: Empirical Evidence for Industrialized Economies*

Mankiw [12] argues that governments should equate the marginal losses of both taxation and seigniorage revenues to finance their spending. His model-the revenue smoothing hypothesisimplies that governments' tax and seigniorage revenues must move together. However, different types of political parties might be more concerned about creating seigniorage. The partisan theory argues that right-wing ...