The political economy of electoral reforms

This dissertation contributes to the emerging literature on endogenous political institutions and the causal relationship between institutions and the political and economic environment. For the purpose, all chapters rely on electoral reforms used as natural experiments that induce exogenous variation on the institutional context and incentives coming therefrom, allowing for the identification of causal treatment effects. In particular, the identification strategies rely at least partially on one of the two following electoral reforms: the Hessian Kommunalwahlreform from 1999 and the recent...