Regierungen können Extrahaushalte gründen, um die Finanzierung staatlicher Aufgaben aus dem Kernhaushalt auszulagern. Die bis zum Jahr 2009 bestehende deutsche Schuldenregel sah eine Ausnahme für Extrahaushalte vor und deshalb bestanden für den Bund und die Länder Anreize zur Verschuldung...

Using an unbalanced panel of 27 OECD countries over the period 1970-2011, I examine whether electoral motives influenced creative accounting. Governments engage in "below-the-line" operations, such as transactions in financial assets, that do not show up in the deficit figures but give rise to...

In many federal countries, local governments run large deficits, even when supervision by state authorities is tight. I investigate whether party alignment of mayors and supervisors influences local government borrowing. The dataset includes 427 local German governments over the period...

International organizations have encouraged national governments to switch from traditional cash-based to business-like accrual accounting, on the presumption that long-run benefits may outweigh substantial implementation and operating costs. We use a quasi-experimental setting to evaluate...

Fiscal rules are a frequent policy measure to restrict deficit-taking among incumbent politicians. In times of increased and sustained investment needs to mitigate the consequences of climate change, and to promote the digital and structural transformation, fiscal rules have become subject to...

States merge small and medium sized municipalities to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of large local governments reduce expenditures. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of county-sized administrations in Germany (districts) on...

The political business cycle theories describe that election-motivated politicians manipulate economic policy-making. Election cycles occur in many fiscal variables, for example tax rates. I examine whether electoral motives influence communal fees in Germany. Fees have to be paid for the use of...

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of studies using microlevel data to analyse the aid-conflict nexus at local level, however most of these studies focus on how conflict dynamics are influenced by aid allocations whereas there is relatively little analysis on how conflict...

This study analyzes the efficiency of the road provision of the local governments of eastern German counties using data envelopment analysis. The provision of roads is a costly public service, which makes an efficiency analysis in this field an interesting subject. I enhance the previous...

Principal-agent problems can arise when preferences of voters are not aligned with preferences of political representatives. Often the consequence of the political principalagent problem is political catering to special interests. In this paper I provide examples of principal-agent problems...