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-sized administrations in Germany (districts) on...

States merge local governments to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of county-sized local governments reduce expenditures, and influence political outcomes. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of large local governments in...

The financial crisis of 2007-09 soon morphed into a crisis of public debt. This paper argues that the way the Eurozone crisis was discursively constructed led to a large scale entrenchment of European welfare states. First of all, how the crisis was constructed did not reflect its actual causes...

Using a sample of European banks, this paper examines the link between disclosure and its economic consequences. We exploit an exogenous cost of capital shock created by the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis and analyze banks' disclosure responses to this shock. First, we find that European banks...

COVID-19 outcomes differ according to socio-economic indicators. In this study, we find there is a specific structure to the differences among UK local authorities, as localities with a lower economic complexity index (ECI) registered significantly higher COVID-19 cases and deaths. We show that...