Spatial inequalities in publicly provided goods such as health care facilities have substantial socio-economic 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...

We examine whether local inconsistencies in the counting of votes influence voting behavior. We exploit the case of the second ballot of the 2016 presidential election in Austria. The ballot needed to be repeated because postal votes were counted carelessly in individual electoral districts...

Spatial inequalities in publicly provided goods such as healthcare facilities have substantial socioeconomic effects. Little is known, however, about why publicly provided goods diverge among urban and rural regions. This study exploits narrow parliamentary majorities in German states between...

We examine how populist governments influence political culture and economic outcomes. Some Austrian communities are governed by far-right populist mayors, directly elected by a majority of voters. We exploit close elections and find that the electorate becomes more polarized under populist...

Voter turnout has declined in many industrialized countries, raising the question of whether electoral institutions increase voter turnout. We exploit an electoral reform in the Austrian state of Burgenland as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of opening hours of polling...

Das 46. Ökonomenpanel von ifo und FAZ widmet sich dem Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Im internationalen Vergleich bewerten die Ökonominnen und Ökonomen den Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland mit einer Durchschnittsnote von 3,4. Die Mehrheit der Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer sieht zwar bei den...

Total factor productivity (TFP) growth allows for additional health care services under restricted resources. We examine whether hospital policy can stimulate hospital TFP growth. We exploit variation across German federal states in the period 1993 to 2013. State governments decide on hospital...

States merge small and medium sized municipalities to achieve economies of scale.Little is known to which extent mergers of large local governments reduce expenditures.I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of county-sizedadministrations in Germany (districts) on...

In many federal countries, local governments run large deficits, even when fiscal supervision by state authorities is tight. I investigate to which extent party alignment of governments and fiscal supervisors influences budget deficits. The dataset includes 427 German local governments for the...

Party performance in state and federal elections is highly interdependent. Federal elections impact regional voting dynamics and vice versa (electoral externalities). We quantify the extent of simultaneous electoral externalities between two layers of government. We apply vector autoregressions...