In many federal countries, local governments run large deficits, even when fiscal supervision by state authorities is tight. I investigate to which extent party alignment of governments and fiscal supervisors influences budget deficits. The dataset includes 427 German local governments for the...

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper...

We investigate how lump-sum equalization transfers affect expenditures and taxes in the municipalities of the largest German state North Rhine-Westphalia. In general, those general-purpose transfers cannot be treated as exogenous variables. Thus, for the identification of causal effects, two...

Diversity of a country is often measured by the amount and spread of nationalities that live there. But also within a country, regions vary in their traditions and culture. Cultural homogeneity within communities is mixed up by (internal) migration, that, like international migration, increases...