town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters … condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? We collected a unique data set for Germany in … which we link election results for different political institutions at the municipal level. To identify causal effects, we …

interested in: (1) Does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election … vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? We rely on a regression discontinuity design focusing on … close election outcomes based on municipal level data for Germany. We find (1) that the party of the mayor can receive a …

state tier. This e ffect only materializes in the election year which suggests that mayors under the new electoral rule put … more e ffort into grant applications for highly visible infrastructure projects in order to increase their re-election …