We study the political economy of state limitations on the taxing powers of local governments, investigating the effects of such restriction on housing markets, community composition, and types of taxes and expenditures undertaken by local governments. We characterize equilibrium when voters...

Human capital and, therefore, education have an impact on the society’s future welfare. In this paper we study the connection between the voters’ support to public education and the retirement concerns. We show that voters anticipate the positive effect of education on future pensions. The...

We study voting over higher education finance in an economy with risk averse households who are heterogeneous in income. We compare four different systems and analyse voters' choices among them: a traditional subsidy scheme, a pure loan scheme, income contingent loans and graduate taxes. Using...

Do governments increase public employment in election years? This paper answers this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. These facts make it possible for us to separate...

It is generally accepted that fiscal decentralization increases citizens’ control over politicians, fostering accountability and increasing efficiency. This article identifies the socioeconomic characteristics of citizens (potential voters) that increase their control over local policy-makers...

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...

This paper analyse the costs and benefits of being a capital or central municipality, where central costs are understood to be incurred specifically as a result of the problems large municipalities located at the centre of an urban agglomeration face and capital costs are understood to result...

We study the inter-temporal spending behavior of Spanish local governments during the last housing boom (1997-2006), a period of substantial short-run momentum in housing-construction revenues. We argue that the unprecedented growth in these revenues might be one of the reasons underlying the...