Bundesverfassungsgericht und Krisenpolitik der EZB — Stellungnahmen der Ökonomen

In June 2013, the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany held an expert hearing on the suitability of ECB measures, such as the purchase of government bonds, and their compatibility with existing EU and German legislation. The statements of five invited experts are documented here. The authors comment on the path from the agreement that has laid down the basic rules for the euro area to a crisis-driven approach that seems to have forgotten these rules. The ECB policy holds many risks - above all that of financing public budgets almost without limits - for the stability of monetary and fiscal governance in the euro area. On the other hand, ECB measures can also be interpreted as a necessary means to comply with the ultimate task of the ECB, the defence of price stability. Hence the ECB’s crisis measures do not represent any intention to intervene in fiscal or economic policy measures, and after the crisis the ECB can return to a narrower interpretation of the role of a central bank. It should not be forgotten that the ECB measures bear high risks for the countries in trouble as well as for those countries supporting them.     

Steuerpolitik als Mittel des Protektionismus?

Globalisation and the further deepening of economic integration that it involves are called into question from several angles. Protectionist measures can be seen in many countries. This paper discusses the issue of protectionist tax policy and links this debate to the current US tax reform.     

Business Cycle Desynchronisation: Amplitude and Beta vs. Co-movement

A high degree of correlation among the business cycles of individual countries is usually seen as a key criterion for an optimum currency area. However, the elasticity with which countries react to the common cycle is equally important. A country with a non-unitary growth elasticity relative to the common area will experience cyclical divergences at the peak and trough of the common cycle. Despite being characterised by highly correlated business cycles, the euro area suffers from widely differing amplitudes.     

Wie sollte das Steuersystem in Deutschland reformiert werden?

Some authors focus on the fact that Germany shows one of the highest tax burdens among the OECD countries. Based on their analysis, they suggest approaches to reduce the tax burden in particular for lower and medium incomes. These tax reliefs are possible, and would not compromise new public investment. But decreases in personal income tax rates mainly relieve higher income earners and are accompanied by high tax losses if the top tax rates are not increased. Alternatives are relief for social contributions or VAT. Other researchers do not look at the tax burden this way: as the income tax burden in Germany is not high from a historical perspective or by international standards, there is no case for massive tax cuts, as this would jeopardise the government’s ability to act and fail to correct past shifts of the tax burden at the expense of households with low incomes. Any tax cuts should be targeted at the bottom half of the income distribution without creating any revenue shortfalls. Instead, the government would be well advised to increase its efforts to overcome the public investment backlog and ensure a well functioning civil service. Furthermore, sustainability oriented tax reforms should focus on a shift of the tax burden from taxes on labour towards environmental and wealth based taxes.     

Reglementierte Berufe: Wettbewerbsindikatoren der EU-Kommission auf dem Prüfstand

The European Commission — in line with its mandate given by the member states — places an emphasis on the enhancement of the internal market for services. One area of focus is the specific regulation of the so-called regulated professions. According to the EU Commission, restrictive professional regulation such as mandatory qualification requirements could hinder the internal market for services. Whilst the Commission does not urge for the abolition of all regulation concerning the area of profession, it does call for a stronger harmonisation. To identify appropriate and inappropriate regulatory approaches in the member states and further need for reforms, the Commission uses economic indicators. This article shows by the sample of the regulated architecture profession which difficulties may be associated with this approach.     

Wirkungen einer Beseitigung des „Mittelstandsbauchs“ im Einkommensteuertarif

German income tax revenue is rising continuously, and at a faster rate than overall revenue. This is why tax reductions are increasingly called for. One option is to abolish or at least level the so-called “middle class bulge”. This paper analyses how different tax reform variants affect revenue and the distribution of the tax burden across taxpayers.     

Aus Hartz IV wird Bürgergeld — nur alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen?

In this article, we discuss reform elements of “Hartz IV”. This includes, on the one hand, merging unemployment benefits with housing benefits and the additional child benefits (Kinderzuschlag) and, on the other hand, reducing disincentives which prevent the recipients from earning higher incomes. Employment incentives can be improved if the effective marginal transfer withdrawal rate is reduced and, at the same time, the preferential treatment of “mini jobs” is reduced. In addition, the eligibility criteria should be simplified. This could reduce the rate of non-takeup and thus hidden poverty. One criticism of such a reform of Hartz IV is that it would increase the number of transfer recipients. However, this is not an economically sensible outcome in a reform effort. What is important is the disposable income of transfer recipients affected and that the design of the transfer withdrawal does not create lock-in effects.

     

Managing Future Oil Revenues in Ghana: An Assessment of Alternative Allocation Options*

Abstract: Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of resource booms often concentrate on the short‐run Dutch disease effects of public expenditure, ignoring the possible long‐term effects of alternative revenue‐allocation options and the supply‐side impact of royalty‐financed public investments. In a simple model applied here, the government decides the level and timing of resource‐rent spending. This model also considers productivity spillovers over time, which may exhibit a sector bias toward domestic production or exports. A dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model is used to simulate the effect of temporary oil revenue inflows to Ghana. The simulations show that beyond the short‐run Dutch disease effects, the relationship between windfall profits, growth, and households’ welfare is less straightforward than what the simple model of the ‘resource curse’ suggests. The DCGE model results suggest that designing a rule that allocates oil revenues to both productivity‐enhancing investments and an oil fund is crucial to achieving shared growth and macroeconomic stability.     

Changes in world real interest rates and inflationary expectations

Changes in World Real Interest Rates and Inflationary Expectations. —One of the major macroeconomic puzzles has been that the real interest rates were persistently low in the seventies and persistently high in the eighties. The authors use a news framework to investigate the extent to which shocks in real output, money supply, world trade, oil prices, stock prices and expected inflation affect the world and national real interest rates. They find dominant effects on real interest rates from movements in expected inflation rates. This suggests the presence of persistent misperceptions about future inflation and the need of further research into the formation of inflationary expectations.