We exploit a discontinuity in Brazilian municipal election rules to investigate whether political competition has a causal impact on policy choices. In municipalities with less than 200,000 voters mayors are elected with a plurality of the vote. In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters a...

This paper analyzes the occurrence of political budget cycles in 604 West German cities between 1975 and 2007. Due to the idiosyncratic timing of state and local elections, the budgetary changes before elections at two tiers of the federalist government can be separately estimated and can also...

We study the fiscal and tax response to intergovernmental grants, exploiting quasi-experimental variation within Germany's fiscal equalization scheme triggered by Census revisions of official population counts. Municipal budgets do not adjust instantly. Instead, spending and investments adapt...

This paper analyzes the occurrence of political budget cycles in 604 West German cities between 1975 and 2007. Due to the idiosyncratic timing of state and local elections, the budgetary changes before elections at two tiers of the federalist government can be separately estimated and can also...

Decentralization, championed by international institutions, has been one of the most prominent public sector reforms of the last decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, few studies propose a quasi-experimental evaluation of its capacity to contribute to local development. We...

We study firm responses to local policies through a survey experiment, providing randomized information on the competitiveness of business tax rates and highway access in their headquarters' municipality. Firms often misperceive local policy competitiveness, especially for tax rates. Investment...

Do young politicians prioritize other types of municipal spending than old politicians? We study this question using hand-collected candidate-level data on municipal elections (1996-2020), along with detailed administrative data on municipal spending in Bavaria. Our identification strategy makes...