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The partisan effects of voter turnout : how conservatives profit from rainy election days

Arnold, Felix; Freier, Ronny - 2015 - This version: March 23, 2015

In this short note, we use data from different elections in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia between 1975 and 2010 to show that the social democrats generally profit from higher voter turnout at the expense of the conservatives. We deal with the endogeneity of voter turnout by using...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010501266

Finding your right (or left) partner to merge

Bruns, Benjamin; Freier, Ronny; Schumann, Abel - 2015

We study political determinants of municipality amalgamations during a boundary reform in the German state of Brandenburg, which reduced the number of municipalities from 1,489 to 421. The analysis is conducted using data on the political decision makers as well as fiscal and socio-economic...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010503875

Regression discontinuity designs based on population thresholds pitfalls and solutions

Eggers, Andrew C.; Freier, Ronny; Grembi, Veronica; … - 2015 - This version: September 2015

In many countries, important features of municipal government (such as the electoral system, mayors' salaries, and the number of councillors) depend on whether the municipality is above or below arbitrary population thresholds. Several papers have used a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011326567

Race to the debt trap? : spatial econometric evidence on debt in German municipalities ; conference paper

Fossen, Frank M.; Freier, Ronny; Martin, Thorsten - 2014 - This draft: January 20, 2014

Through an intertemporal budget constraint, jurisdictions may gain advantages in tax and spending competition by 'competing' on debt. While the existing spatial econometric literature focuses on tax and spending competition, very little is known about spatial interaction via public debt. This...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010485958

Overlapping political budget cycles in the legislative and the executive

Foremny, Dirk; Freier, Ronny; Moessinger, Marc-Daniel; … - 2014

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010438016

Voting for direct democracy : evidence from a unique popular initiative in Bavaria

Arnold, Felix; Freier, Ronny; Pallauf, Magdalena; … - 2014

We analyze a constitutional change in the German State of Bavaria where citizens, not politicians, granted themselves more say in politics at the local level through a constitutional initiative at the state level. This institutional setting allows us to focus on revealed preferences for direct...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010442370

The earnings returns to graduating with honors : evidence from law graduates

Freier, Ronny; Schumann, Mathias; Siedler, Thomas - 2014

This paper studies the causal effects of graduating from university with an honors degree on subsequent earnings. While a rich body of literature has focused on estimating returns to human capital, few studies have analyzed returns at the very top of the education distribution. We highlight the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010442433

Race to the debt trap? : spatial econometric evidence on debt in German municipalities

Fossen, Frank M.; Freier, Ronny; Martin, Thorsten - 2014

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010238832

Religious heterogeneity and fiscal policy : evidence from German reunification

Freier, Ronny; Geys, Benny; Holm, Joshua - 2013

Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First,...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009722300

Signature requirements and citizen initatives : quasi-experimental evidence from Germany

Arnold, Felix; Freier, Ronny - 2013

Signature requirements are often used as hurdles to prevent overuse of public referenda. We evaluate the causal effect of lowering signature requirements on the number of observed citizen initiatives. Based on municipality-level data for Germany, we make use of legislative changes at specific...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009771888