Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on the intra-jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical effects on the finances of other levels of government have yet to be explored thoroughly. This paper investigates the influence...

The Swiss debt brake is widely appreciated as one of the most rationally designed fiscal rules in the world and was thus also discussed as blueprint in the debates about fiscal rules in Germany, the European Union member states and Israel. However, evidence that this rule really contributes to...

The paper investigates the fiscal effects of Swiss cantonal debt brakes by taking explicitly into account the rules' coverage. An in-depth analysis provides unique evidence that suggests the following: First, fiscal rules at the cantonal level have a negative effect on public deficits, which is...

We investigate the political determinants of risk premiums which sub-national governments in Switzerland have to pay for their sovereign bond emissions. For this purpose we make use of financial market data from 288 tradable cantonal bonds in the period from 1981 to 2007. Our main focus is on...

New government spending must be approved by a referendum of citizens in many Swiss cantons. This decisionmaking procedure seems like a simple way to address citizen-legislator agency problems, but little systematic evidence is available concerning its effect on spending outcomes. We estimate...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...

Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on intra-jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical impacts on the finances of other levels of governments have yet to be explored thoroughly. The paper investigates the influence of...

This paper analyses the importance of fiscal mechanisms for regional risk sharing and redistribution in Switzerland. Switzerland is a particularly interesting setting in this context because it features both a high level of fiscal autonomy for Swiss cantons and explicit fiscal transfers between...

The Swiss debt brake is widely appreciated as one of the most rationally designed fiscal rules in the world and was thus also discussed as blueprint in the debates about fiscal rules in Germany, the European Union member states and Israel. However, evidence that this rule really contributes to...