We find that policy decisions made by elected politicians in Portuguese municipalities violate the predictions of standard microeconomic theory. Municipalities can choose a withholding rate between zero and five percent of the income tax revenue collected within their boundaries by the national...

We survey the theoretical and empirical literature on local and international tax competition in Economics. Based on this survey, we discuss whether EU countries should harmonize tax policies to prevent a race to the bottom. Much of the evidence suggests that tax competition does not lead to...

In 2001, the state parliament of the German federal state of Hesse abolished a 5 percent legal electoral threshold for local elections. This reform had a stronger effect on municipalities with larger councils because implicit electoral thresholds decrease with council size. Exploiting...

Do established parties change political institutions to disadvantage smaller, non-mainstream parties if the latters' electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal State of Hesse. The experiment is the abolishment of an explicit electoral...

Do established parties change political institutions to disadvantage smaller, nonmainstream parties if the latters´ electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal state of Hesse. The experiment is the abolishment of an explicit electoral...

This study relies on a constitutional reform introducing term limits at the local elections level in Portugal as a natural experiment to estimate incumbency advantage in mayoral elections. It stresses the distinction between partisan and personal incumbency advantage using data on six local...

This paper studies the economic costs of conflicts at the country and ethnic group settlement level with light output data as measured by orbital satellites and conflict data spatially mapped to latitude and longitude coordinates. Using a worldwide dataset of 7,704 individual ethnic group...

This paper analyzes the consequences of an electoral reform introducing mayoral term limits at the municipal level in Portugal. Relying on a difference-in-difference methodology and a novel method that accounts for anticipatory effects of reforms, this study explores variation between and within...

This study relies on a recent reform introducing gubernatorial term limits at the Portuguese local level to explore how an exogenous variation in eligibility for re-election affects local fiscal policy choices. Relying on electoral and fiscal outcomes for the past three complete electoral terms...

I exploit an exogenous reform introducing a local business tax in Portugal to study tax mimicking among jurisdictions. The identification strategy relies on a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences methodology and heterogeneity in treatment intensity. Results show evidence of significant...