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A 1999 reform allowed Italian Mayors to partially substitute a more accountable source of tax revenue (the property tax) with a less transparent one (a surcharge on the personal income tax). Theoretical analysis suggests this should give incompetent Mayors a less costly way to hide themselves,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013141506
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013097710
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013147419
Estonian municipalities should perform a broad range of functions, while their fiscal resources are often limited and large disparities in fiscal capacity prevail among them. Moreover, the power to regulate fiscal affairs is mostly in the hands of the central government. We discuss how a strict...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013155938
We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013058501
Redistributive grants schemes, such as fiscal equalization, are a common characteristic of local public finance in several countries. However, large and small jurisdictions are treated differently by the respective fiscal equalization schemes that often tend to favour larger jurisdictions. This...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012768816
The paper empirically analyzes the incentive effects of equalizing transfers on business tax policy by exploiting a natural experiment in the state of Lower Saxony which changed its equalization formula as of 1999. We resort to within-state and across-state difference-in-difference estimates to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013317157
When investigating the effects of federal grants on the behavior of lower-level governments, it is hard to defend the handling of grants as an exogenous factor affecting local governments; federal governments often set grants based on characteristics and performance of local governments. In this...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013317318
Most cities enjoy some autonomy over how they tax their residents, and that autonomy is typically exercised by multiple municipal governments within a given city. In this chapter, we document patterns of city-level taxation across countries, and we review the literature on a number of salient...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013047262
for redistribution beyond self-interest. Subjects generated a high or a low income either through a lottery or through an …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012962917