We study the fiscal and tax response to intergovernmental grants, exploiting quasi-experimental variation within Germany’s fiscal equalization scheme triggered by Census revisions of official population counts. Municipal budgets do not adjust instantly. Instead, spending and investments adapt...

A gradually introduced reform of local government accounting made it temporarily likely for municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to avoid the effective control of their budget by the authorities in charge with overseeing local government budgets and enforcing the existing...

Using a new data set on Swiss state and local governments from 1890 to today, we analyze how the adoption of proportional representation affects fiscal policy. We show that proportional systems shift spending toward broad goods (e.g. education and welfare benefits) but decrease spending on...

We evaluate the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. In 1999, the Italian central government introduced fiscal rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on municipal governments, and in 2001 the rules were relaxed for municipalities...

We study how policies limiting the spending capacity of local governments may reduce corruption. We exploit the extension of one such policy, the Domestic Stability Pact (DSP), to small Italian municipalities. The DSP led to a decrease in both recorded corruption rates and corruption charges per...

We study the impact of fiscal revenue shocks on local fiscal policy. We focus on the very volatile revenues from the immovable property gains tax in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, and analyze fiscal behavior following large and rare positive and negative revenue shocks. We apply causal...