In many federal countries, local governments run large deficits, even when supervision by state authorities is tight. I investigate whether party alignment of mayors and supervisors influences local government borrowing. The dataset includes 427 local German governments over the period...

Solid budgets serve as important quality signals for the electorate. Politicians might therefore face an incentive to influence tax revenue forecasts, which are widely regarded as a key element for budget setups. Looking at the time period from 1996 to 2012, in this study we systematically...

Using an unbalanced panel of 27 OECD countries over the period 1970-2011, I examine whether electoral motives influenced creative accounting. Governments engage in "below-the-line" operations, such as transactions in financial assets, that do not show up in the deficit figures but give rise to...

Using a panel of naturalizations in U.S. states from 1965 to 2012, we empirically analyze the impact of elections on naturalization policy. Our results indicate that naturalization policy is (partly) driven by national elections: there are more naturalizations in presidential election years and...

The political business cycle theories describe that election-motivated politicians manipulate economic policy-making. Election cycles occur in many fiscal variables, for example tax rates. I examine whether electoral motives influence communal fees in Germany. Fees have to be paid for the use of...

Spatial inequalities in publicly provided goods such as health care facilities have substantial socioeconomic effects. Little is known, however, as to why publicly provided goods diverge among urban and rural regions. We exploit narrow parliamentary majorities in German states between 1950 and...

Perceived corruption in the public sector is measured by the reversed Transparency International's Perception of Corruption Index (CPI). The dataset includes around 100 democracies over the period 2012-2016, a sample for which the CPI is comparable across countries and over time. The results...

We examine partisan bias in inflation expectations. Our dataset includes inflation expectations of the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations over the period June 2013 to June 2018. The results show that inflation expectations were 0.46 percentage points higher in Republican-dominated...

Previous studies used general government data to examine whether national governments' electoral motives and ideology influenced budget composition in OECD countries. General government data includes, however, the state and local level. Using new data for general and central government over the...

Despite the recognition that asylum policies are partly determined by political economy factors in the destination country, there is little empirical evidence on the precise linkages between those political factors and asylum policies. We shed light on this issue by examining the impact of...