autonomously by German municipalities. As election dates vary across local councils, the data allows us to disentangle effects … behavior as the growth rate of the local business tax is significantly reduced in the election year and the year prior to the … election, while it jumps up in the year after the election. This pattern turns out to be robust against a number of sensitivity …

democratic experience and strong party ties. Utilizing the 1990 German Unification Election Study, I examine a natural experiment …