Im Hinblick auf eine mögliche Reform des kommunalen Finanzausgleichs in Niedersachsen weist dieser Beitrag auf den Zusammenhang zwischen diesem System und den Gewerbesteuerhebesätzen hin. Dafür werden die vom kommunalen Finanzausgleich ausgehenden Anreizeffekte auf die kommunale Hebesatzwahl...

This article analyses the Croatian Scientific Bibliography (CROSBI) as a social application using a number of different approaches. By analysing and visualizing the conceptual network the core of keywords is determined for each scientific field: biomedical sciences, biotechnology, social...

We develop a network model looking at the role of different types of peers in education. The empirical salience of the model is tested using a very detailed longitudinal dataset of adolescent friendship networks. We find that there are strong and persistent peer effects in education but peers...

I present a model of conformism in social networks that incorporates both peer effects and self-selection. I find that equilibrium behaviors are linked through the Laplacian matrix of the equilibrium network. I show that conformism has positive social value and that social welfare can be bounded...

This paper studies the determinants of local tax rates. For the two main local taxes in Spain - the property tax and the motor vehicle tax - we test the existence of tax mimicking, yardstick competition and political trends in a sample of 2,713 municipalities. Using different spatial models, the...

The aim of this work is to present a methodology useful to verify the impact of public interventions directed to support the technological innovation in local groups of SMEs. In the last decades, in several agglomerations of firms, some difficulties emerged, related to the small-medium...

The aim of this paper is to conduct an empirical investigation regarding the presence of political and informative trends in tax setting of local governments as an alternative theoretical explanation to the tax mimick-ing. Both phenomena have been tested on municipalities' cross-sectional data...