Fiscal rules are laws aimed at reducing the incentive to accumulate debt, and many countries adopt them to discipline local governments. Yet, their effectiveness is disputed because of commitment and enforcement problems. We study their impact applying a quasi-experimental design in Italy. In...

Employing a sample of Spanish municipalities from the Madrid region for the period 2010-2019, we study the influence of a politician's sex on political budget cycles (PBCs). The Madrid region is subject to a homogenous set of budget rules, which allows consistently categorising budget...

Employing a sample of Spanish municipalities from the Madrid region for the period 2010−2019, we study the influence of a politician’s sex on political budget cycles (PBCs). The Madrid region is subject to a homogenous set of budget rules, which allows consistently categorising budget...

We compare single round vs runoff elections under plurality rule, allowing for partly endogenous party formation. Under runoff elections, the number of political candidates is larger, but the influence of extremist voters on equilibrium policy and hence policy volatility are smaller, because the...

The authors model COVID infections and COVID deaths, both reported and implied, for the 50 U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia, and separately for a sample of 33 countries, as a function of pre-existing circumstances that citizens have no ability to control over the short term. These...

Does budget transparency effectively limit the use of creative accounting to circumvent fiscal rules? Through examining a Spanish reform that limited the obligation to provide regular budget information, I study the effect of relaxing transparency rules on budget forecast errors. After the...

This paper examines the evolution of public policies before the scheduled political elections based on the government responses to the Covid pandemic. The results of an event study in a sample of countries that experienced political elections during the first year of the pandemic suggest that...

Unlike in previous crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a crisis affecting all population groups, all economic sectors and all jurisdictions in the Philippines, as elsewhere. The impact of the COVID-19 vary across localities, however, partly due to differences in local government responses...

The abolition of the municipal property tax on owner-occupied dwellings accomplished in Italy in 2008 offers a quasi-natural experiment that allows for the identification of the presence of political budget cycles - the incentives for municipalities close to elections to manipulate policy...

The 1974 Budget Act marked a turning point in U.S. budgeting history. With the Act, Congress decisively asserted its fiscal power, becoming more independent from the President in developing the budget and appropriating funds. Lawmakers at the time believed that the status quo, wherein Congress...