Salvatore Barbaro

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

The Condorcet paradox has been a significant focus of investigation since Ken-neth Arrow rediscovered its importance for economic theory. Recent research on this phenomenon has oscillated between simulation studies, probability calculations based on hypothetical voter preferences, and empirical analyses often limited by unsatisfactory data. This pa...

In federal systems, subnational governments often take highly asymmetric positions on questions of self-rule and shared rule. The German case is emblematic of this dynamic, as some state governments assert their primary role in legislative functions while others highlight the benefits of coordinated and uniform decision-making. Although the existin...

Despite the implementation of significant measures by European countries in recent years, smoking rates in Europe remain persistently high. The European Commission is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of its tobacco regulations. This article aims to address critical inquiries that arise during the amendment of the regulatory framework. W...

In federal systems, the relationship between central governments and constituent states increasingly hinges on intergovernmental grants-in-aid. Central governments are progressively leveraging conditional grants to advance supra-regional interests, necessitating co-financing by recipient states. This paper examines the impact of such arrangements t...

How should an excessively large parliament be effectively reduced in size without violating constitutional principles? This is a question that the German Bundestag has discussed since the introduction of the 2013 electoral reform measure. Facing a Bundestag consisting of 709 members and some public dissatisfaction, a reform measure to decrease the...

Zusammenfassung Neben der Umsatzsteuer unterliegt eine Reihe gesundheitsschädlicher Produkte einer spezifischen Verbrauchssteuer wie der Bier‑, Alkohol- und Tabaksteuer. In einer Gesamtschau dieser sin taxes offenbart sich ein Steuersystem voller Inkonsistenzen. Zum Beispiel unterliegt Bier einer speziellen Verbrauchssteuer, während der ebenfalls w...

Unconditional intergovernmental grants are popular with economists but increasingly rarely observed in practice. Conversely, earmarking grants became a common form of the centres’ support to states in federalist countries, though they are seriously flawed by welfare loss induced by the intended reallocation of states’ provision of goods and service...

A widely-supported aim of governments is to reduce the consumption of health-harming tobacco products and to increase their cessation. To reach this goal, the European Union is preparing a revision of its tobacco-related taxation. A crucial question in this revision is how to treat new (non-combustible) products like heated tobacco and e-cigarettes...

Out of the many possible voting schemes, the notoriously-used plurality rule is far from being the best. Previous research from France and the US reveals how plurality winners fall short of majority support. Therefore, eminent scholars advocate the simple-majority rule. The latter, however, faces the threat of indeterminacy due to cycling patterns....

1. According to civil-law regulations, bidders in auctions can withdraw a submitted bid under several circumstances. 2. By retracting bids, the sealed bid of potential buyers are uncovered. 3. We introduce the notion of squeezing to describe the activity of retracting bids to uncover the payment reserves of bidders. 4. The unsuspecting bidder will...

Due to low election turnouts, the debate on run-off elections to fill a mayor's office flames up again and again. On average, roughly 37\% cast a vote in recent local run-off elections to fill the office of mayors and district chief executives. A recent attempt by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia to substitute the strict-majority voting cum run-...

Der Gesetzgeber hat bei der Auswahl des Wahlverfahrens einen weiten Ermessensspielraum. Dieser Beitrag hinterfragt, wie weit ein solcher Spielraum ausgestaltet ist. Einerseits, weil das Mehrheitsprinzip durch eine Vielzahl von möglichen und praktisch angewendeten Wahlverfahren verletzt wird und zum anderen, weil der Gesetzgeber bzw. eine parlamenta...

Most itemized tax exemptions lead to significant deductions for a minority of the population only. This raises the question why the majority does not vote for the abolition of these tax privileges in exchange for lower tax rates. In this paper we show that a reform proposal may be voted down, even when the majority uses the exemption at stake below...

This paper analyzes the distributional impacts of the German in-come tax system. It is based on a large representative sample of the 1998 income tax files of the German population. The tax system is highly progressive even when accounting for the numerous exclusions the German tax law provides. These are often presumed to be de-signed for richer ho...

In this paper we analyze the political economy of revenue-neutral income tax reforms when a government aims at cutting back deduction possibilities in exchange for lower tax rates (“tax-cut-cum-base-broadening”). We show that the individual decision whether to support or reject a reform proposal depends on how strongly the voter is affected by all...

The individual voting behavior on the abolishment of single income-tax exemptions crucially depends on how strongly agents are affected by other deduction possibilities that are not at stake in the reform plans of the government. The interactions depend (i) on the shape of the tax schedule, and (ii) on how the government wants to use the revenue th...

A persistent controversy in the economics of higher education is the distributional consequences of tuition-fee subsidies. There are two points at issue. First, subsidies affect income distribution between rich and poor households, analyzed by cross-sectional studies. Second, there may also be long-run effects on income distribution, i.e., toward g...

In this paper we analyze the political economics of di#erent strategies to implement revenue neutral reforms of a complicated income tax system ("tax--cut--cum--base--broadening"). We present a social choice model where individuals initially have two deduction possibilities from the tax base. The government wants to cut back these tax exemptions an...

In this paper we analyze the political economics of different strategies to implement revenue neutral reforms of a complicated income tax system (�tax-cut-cum-base-broadening�). We set up a straightforward social choice model where individuals initially have two deduction possibilities from the tax base. The government wants to cut back the tax bas...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the distributional effect of public higher education through analysis of a cross-sectional view of West Germany in 1997. In contrast to a widely held hypothesis in economics, our findings do not show evidence for a regressive effect. The use of a net-transfer calculation clearly indicates a progressive dist...

For more than 150 years, many economists have assumed public subsidies on higher education to have a regressive distributional effect. The German debate on this issue is kept alive by many empirical studies. Most of them confirm the thesis of a \"perverse distribution of income\" (Milton Friedman). Nevertheless, a methodological analysis of these s...

I investigate 20 letters by Pier Paolo Pasolini regarding their word-length distributions, the frequency of word lengths as measured by the number of syllables (vowels, dipthongs, triphthongs). To these 20 letters, the 1-displaced Singh-Poisson distribution was fitted. We conclude that the Singh-Poisson distribution can be fitted with highest signi...