Staatsverschuldungsunterschiede im internationalen Vergleich und Schlussfolgerungen für Deutschland

This article analyses public debt differences across industrial countries with a special focus on Germany on the basis of political economy approaches. We are interested in identifying the empirically relevant theories in order to draw conclusions for Germany based on international differences in the preferences of the political agents and/or in the political or budgetary institutions.We discuss the recent developments in Germany - notably the reform of the distribution of competencies between the federal and the state level - and conclude that the current situation provides some opportunities to address the issue of public deb