Stefanie Gäbler prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in March 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of six distinct empirical essays...

Stefanie Gäbler prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in March 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of six distinct empirical essays...

We analyze the decision of local governments to deploy social media. We argue that - by deploying social media - governments send a signal of modernity, transparency and openness for dialogue to their citizens. We apply a hazard model to panel data on municipalities in the German state of Hesse...

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether politicians manipulate the timing of tax rate changes in a strategic way to maximize reelection prospects. To do so, we exploit the German local business tax as a testing ground which is set autonomously by German municipalities. As election dates...

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether politicians manipulate the timing of tax rate changes in a strategic way to maximize reelection prospects. To do so, we exploit the German local business tax as a testing ground which is set autonomously by German municipalities. As election dates...

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...

In 2006, the reform of the German fiscal constitution realigned legislative powers between the federal and the state governments. Since 2007, the German state governments have been allowed to design real estate transfer tax rates. We investigate whether government ideology predicts the levels...

We analyze the impact of large firms on business tax rates using data from German mu-nicipalities in Hesse in 1998-2005. Results suggest that business tax rates decrease with tax-payers' concentration, indicating strong local lobbying power of large firms. -- tax competition ; yardstick...

Since 2007 the German state governments have been allowed by a constitutional reform to set real estate transfer tax rates. We exploit this reform and investigate whether government ideology predicts the levels and increases in the real estate transfer tax rates. The results show that leftwing...

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...