The paper investigates the fiscal effects of Swiss cantonal debt brakes by taking explicitly into account the rules' coverage. An in-depth analysis provides unique evidence that suggests the following: First, fiscal rules at the cantonal level have a negative effect on public deficits, which is...

We present an electoral agency model that, in a stylized way, captures the public finance structure of Norwegian municipal governments. It drives the following main implication: increasing partisan bias in favor of the incumbent reduces efficiency in public production, and more so the higher the...

We examine the relationship between legislature size and several components of government spending using a methodology that allows us to estimate how legislature size influences the fiscal response to shocks that are common to all states. We find little evidence that states with larger than...

Using two instruments of perceived probabilities of income tax changes, I show that the implications of tax news shocks on the economy and asset prices are asymmetric across the political partisan cycle. Tax shocks cause high wealth states during Republican administrations. To compensate for...

This paper empirically investigates whether households affected by income shocks cope by reducing human capital investments. The analysis uses Crisis Response Surveys conducted in Armenia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Turkey during 2009 and 2010. A propensity score matching technique is...