Previous studies on electoral competition show that fiscal variables are manipulated by incumbent politicians in order to be re-elected. This phenomenon has been addressed by the literature on electoral budget cycle and, in a decentralised economy, by the literature on yardstick competition. Our...

Previous studies on electoral competition show that fiscal variables are manipulated by incumbent politicians in order to be re-elected. This phenomenon has been addressed by the literature on electoral budget cycle and, in a decentralised economy, by the literature on yardstick competition. Our...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which local budget spending composition reacts to fiscal rules variations. I consider the budget of Italian municipalities and exploit specific changes in the Domestic Stability Pact's rules, to perform a difference-in-discontinuities...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which local budget spending composition reacts to fiscal rules variations. I consider the budget of Italian municipalities and exploit specific changes in the Domestic Stability Pact's rules, to perform a difference-in-discontinuities...

The government fragmentation hypothesis (GFH) states that coalition governments spend more than single-party governments due to an underlying common pool problem. Using a large panel data set on 604 local governments in the German state of Baden-Württemberg for the 1994-2014 period, I test the...

Politicians are expected to influence policy outcomes in a way to gain electoral advantage. There is, however, a pending question whether efficiency in the provision of public goods and services is affected by strategic behavior. I examine how electoral cycles influence local government...

This paper investigates whether national evaluation of decentralised government performance tends, by lessening local information spill-overs, to reduce the scope for local performance comparisons and consequently to lower the extent of spatial auto-correlation among local government...

This paper investigates whether national evaluation of decentralised government performance tends, by lessening local information spill-overs, to reduce the scope for local performance comparisons and consequently to lower the extent of spatial auto-correlation among local government...

This paper analyzes the occurrence of political budget cycles in 604 West German cities between 1975 and 2007. Due to the idiosyncratic timing of state and local elections, the budgetary changes before elections at two tiers of the federalist government can be separately estimated and can also...