Recently a wide and empirically-backed consensus has emerged arguing that direct democratic control over government's spending decisions through initiatives and referenda constrains government size. But what happens if budgetary matters are excluded from the voters' right of the initiative? I...

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid program for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German State of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using difference-in-differences estimation strategies, we find that aided municipalities have - depending on broadband quality -...

This paper investigates how changes to the age distribution of cities' resident popu-lations shape the growth rate of local house prices in different market segments. For estimation purposes, we combine city-level demographic information with de-tailed housing price data for 87 German cities...