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Finding Your Right (or Left) Partner to Merge

Bruns, Benjamin; Freier, Ronny; Schumann, Abel - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2015

We study political determinants of municipality amalgamations during a boundary reform in the German state of Brandenburg, which reduced the number of municipalities from 1,489 to 421. The analysis is conducted using data on the political decision makers as well as fiscal and socio-economic...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011245937

Incumbency, Party Identity and Governmental Lead: Evidence for Heterogeneous Incumbency Effects for Germany

Ade, Florian; Freier, Ronny; Odendahl, Christian - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2011

Do incumbents in an election have an advantage, and if so, are these advantages heterogeneous across parties or government and opposition? We first present a theoretical discussion on the possible heterogeneity of incumbency effects in a pure two-party system. Then, we estimate the incumbency...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009399834

Incumbency as the Major Advantage: The Electoral Advantage for Parties of Incumbent Mayors

Freier, Ronny - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2011

This paper provides empirical evidence on the party incumbency advantage in mayoral elections in Germany. Using a regression discontinuity design on a data set of about 25,000 elections, I estimate a causal incumbency effect of 38-40 percentage points in the probability of winning the next mayor...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009251356

Religious Heterogeneity and Fiscal Policy: Evidence from German Reunification

Freier, Ronny; Geys, Benny; Holm, Joshua - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2013

Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First,...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010896168

Do Parties Matter?: Estimating the Effect of Political Power in Multi-party Systems

Freier, Ronny; Odendahl, Christian - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2012

This paper estimates the effect of political power on tax policies in municipal councils under a proportional election system. The main challenge in estimating the causal effect of parties on policy is to isolate the effect of power from underlying voter preferences and the selection effect of...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010896169

Divided Government versus Incumbency Externality Effect: Quasi-Experimental Evidence on Multiple Voting Decisions

Ade, Florian; Freier, Ronny - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2011

This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in three questions: (1) Does the partisan identity of the local mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009021616

Fiscal Federalism: Normative Criteria for Evaluations, Developments in Selected OECD Countries, and Empirical Evidence for Russia

Thießen, Ulrich - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2005

Criteria for evaluation of systems of fiscal federalism are derived from the current state of the theory of fiscal federalism. In a second step we provide an overview of developments of fiscal federalism systems in OECD countries highlighting some existing trends. Third, an overview of Russia's...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005068933

Does Fiscal Decentralisation Foster Regional Investment in Productive Infrastructure?

Kappeler, Andreas; Solé-Ollé, Albert; Stephan, Andreas; … - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2012

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of revenue decentralization on the provision of infrastructure at the … sub-national level. We estimate the effects of revenue decentralization and earmarked grant financing on the level of sub … revenue decentralization and not investment in redistribution. However, the effect of revenue decentralization is lower the …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011128834

Fiscal Federalism and Tax Administration: Evidence from Germany

Bönke, Timm; Jochimsen, Beate; Schröder, Carsten - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2013

In many federations, fiscal equalization schemes soften fiscal imbalances across the member states. Such schemes usually imply that the member states internalize only a small fraction of the additional tax revenue from an expansion of the state-specific tax bases, while the remainder of the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011128867

Fiscal Competition, Capital-Skill Complementarity, and the Composition of Public Spending

Borck, Rainald - DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) - 2005

Following Keen and Marchand (1997), the paper analyses the effect of fiscal competition on the composition of public spending in a model where capital and skilled workers are mobile while low skilled workers are immobile. Taxes are levied on capital and labour. Each group of workers benefits...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005018668