This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between an incumbent officeholder and the electorate, where the officeholder is initially uninformed about her ability. If officeholder effort and ability interact in the ""production function"" that determines performance in office,...

This study uses a switching regression framework with known sample separation to analyze the effects of corporate income taxation on investment in case of binding and non-binding financial constraints. By employing two different sample splitting criteria, payout behavior and the ratio of...

Firms should use all available information to anticipate future tax rates. Firm mobility, as a key determinant of corporate tax rates, is one such source of information. We first show theoretically that a government sets a higher tax rates on firm profits if average firm mobility in its...

Theory suggests that large firms are more likely to engage in lobbying behaviour and are geographically more mobile than smaller entities. Conditional on jurisdiction size, policy choices are thus predicted to depend on the shape of a jurisdiction’s firm size distribution, with more...

Theory suggests that large firms are more likely to engage in lobbying behaviour and have better bargaining positions against their host governments than smaller entities. Conditional on jurisdiction size, public policy choices are thus predicted to depend on the shape of a jurisdiction's firm...

We examine the effect of local business taxation and local public good and service (PIGS) provision on the number and spatial distribution of new firms. Testing ground is Germany and we rely on the universe of firm foundations between 1998 and 2006. Methodologically, we estimate fixed effects...

We examine the effect of local business taxation and local public good and service (PIGS) provision on the number and spatial distribution of new firms. The analysis draws on panel data for the universe of rm foundations in German municipalities, matched to municipalities' local business tax...