The political economy of the German Länder deficits: weak governments meet strong finance ministers

Jochimsen, Beate; Nuscheler, Robert

doi:10.1080/00036840903194246

Cited by 47 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Yet, procedural rules are roughly identical in all German states. Other authors focus on tenure (Feld and Schaltegger, 2010) and party affiliation (Jochimsen and Nuscheler, 2011). We pick up those approaches and include them in this study.…”

Section: Personality Of the Finance Ministermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, her interests regarding borrowing should be more in line with those of the average taxpayer (cf. Hagen and Harden, 1995;Hallerberg and Hagen, 1999;Feld and Schaltegger, 2010;Jochimsen and Nuscheler, 2011;Wehner, 2010). Therefore, we concentrate on a still unexplored aspect of the theory on weak governments, namely the position of the finance minister within the cabinet.…”

Section: Political Economy Of Public Deficitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article takes first steps in this direction. Jochimsen and Nuscheler (2011) are the first to define 'strengths' of the finance minister in the context of an empirical study. They consider the finance minster to be in a strong position if she belongs to the party of the prime minister.…”

Section: Personality Of the Finance Ministermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We follow Jochimsen and Nuscheler (2011) and include a dummy variable for when the finance minister in a coalition government has strong ties with the prime minister as they both belong to the same party (Affinity). Furthermore, we take into account the 16 Note that some ministers studied multiple subjects.…”

Section: Position Of the Finance Ministersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, the strength of the finance minister might have an influence on fiscal performance. As factors strengthening the minister of finance, the literature examines her procedural rights (Hagen and Harden, 1995;Hallerberg, Strauch, and Hagen, 2007), her relationship with the prime minister (Jochimsen and Nuscheler, 2011) and the number of spending ministers in opposition to her (Hagen and Harden, 1995;Kontopoulos and Perotti, 1999;Volkerink and Haan, 2001). Somewhat surprisingly, however, individual characteristics of the finance minister such as personal career planning, educational background and professional experience as well as gender and family status are unexplored.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The perfect finance minister: Whom to appoint as finance minister to balance the budget

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe role and influence of the finance minister within the cabinet are discussed with increasing prominence in the recent theoretical literature on the political economy of budget deficits. It is generally assumed that the spending ministers can raise their reputation purely with new or more extensive expenditure programs, whereas solely the finance minister is interested to balance the budget. Using a dynamic panel model to study the development of public deficits in the German states between 1960 and 2009, we identify several personal characteristics of the finance ministers that significantly influence budgetary performance. Namely her professional background seems to affect budget deficits. During times of fiscal stress, our results can guide prime ministers in the nominating of finance ministers in order to assure sound budgeting.

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Section: Personality Of the Finance Ministermentioning

confidence: 99%