We provide causal evidence that German savings banks where local politicians are by law involved in their management systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group of...

This paper analyzes a two-player all-pay auction with incomplete information. More precisely, one bidder is uncertain about the size of the initial advantage of his rival modeled as a head start in the auction. I derive the unique Bayesian Nash equilibrium outcome for a large class of cumulative...