Using a unique set of electoral rules present in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, we explore the question whether local electoral rules affect the size of local governments. We find evidence that party--list system is associated with higher levels of expenditure and that direct elections of the...

We analyze the effects of political business cycles and fiscal autonomy on the expenditure categories of Polish municipalities. Using System GMM technique, we find convincing evidence for strong political business cycles in almost all expenditure categories, and in particular for the categories...

Corruption is a problem that has been shown to adversely affect a country’s development. Recent studies have shown that a country’s electoral system can affect its corruption level. But if that is the case, then electoral rules could be chosen to maximize opportunities for corruption. This...

I study whether bailouts of local governments carry electoral benefits for state governments with a dataset covering 421 municipalities in the German state of Hesse over the period 1999-2011. I find that past bailouts have no economically significant effect on the municipality-level vote share...

The number of municipalities in Japan has decreased from 3,232 in 1999 to 1,820 in 2006 because of municipal mergers, called Heisei-no-Daigappei. This paper estimates the political choices of local council members in Japan’s municipal mergers. In Japan, being a local council member is a...

We propose a method based on the distance function to empirically estimate the social cost arising from rent seeking behaviour in declining industries. Due to import competition, the factors of a particular industry undergo losses in real income, and have incentives to seek protection. In the...

This paper presents an index of institutionalized social technologies covering its two main dimensions namely Risk reducing technologies and Anti Rent seeking technologies and in turn covers several social, institutional, political and economic aspects. Specifically it attempted to classify and...

This paper presents an index of institutionalized social technologies for Pakistan, covering its two main dimensions namely Risk reducing technologies and Anti Rent seeking technologies and in turn covers several social, institutional, political and economic aspects. It is also analyzed...

The role of institutions in promoting economic growth and development has generated considerable interest among researchers and practitioners in recent years. This paper explores the role of state institutions in promoting growth using a GMM econometric model. Specifically it attempted to test...

We study the economic structure of the life of Harry Potter and his co-actors as an economic model that governs the social organization of their economic activities. Our goal is to study and understand the internal consistency of the Potterian economic model and explore the relationships between...