This paper first formulates a model of how the politicians in a local government collectively lobby to raise intergovernmental grants to their local government. The model identifies a relationship between council size and grants received. I then study this relationship empirically using the...

This paper investigates the effect of political representation on the electoral outcome at the party level in a proportional multiparty election system using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation in a council; the first is to hold seats, and the...

We use the 1952 Swedish municipal amalgamation reform to study free-riding and the common pool problem in politics. We expect municipalities that were affected by the reform to increase their debt in anticipation of a merger, and this effect to be larger if they were merged with many other...

The Chinese economy has undergone three major phases: the 1978-97 period marked as the SOE-led economy, the 1998-2015 phase as the investment-driven economy, and the new normal economy since 2016. All three economies have been shaped by the government financial policies, defined as a set of...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of populist governments on public policies and finances. We focus on Italian local governments (i.e. municipalities) over the 2010-2019 period, when a populists, i.e. the Five Stars Movement, became the most voted party in the country. We first...

Central government bailouts of local governments are commonly viewed as a recipe for local fiscal indiscipline, as local governments learn that the center will come to the rescue in times of trouble. However, little is known about the consequences of bailouts granted conditional on local...

Persistent budget deficits are commonly blamed on irresponsible governments. However, even if the government is fiscally responsible, the agents in charge of implementing the budget may be less concerned about fiscal discipline. According to the survey data analyzed in this paper, such conflicts...