In this paper, we analyze several local referendums on land development and land-use regulation in the City of Erlangen (Germany) in the period between 2011 and 2018. To identify the positive influence of the travel distance on approval for the development of land, we employ a two-way...

One explanation of the recent real estate bubble might point to homeowners' artificially restricting housing supply. While empirical work has not found unequivocal evidence in support of this hypothesis, homeowners may well be restricting supply nonetheless, and without this restriction...

A number of countries have seen large booms in house prices over recent years. Some authors argue that these booms have also been driven by the desire of homevoters -- voters who are homeowners -- to restrict supply, or zone. Only, empirical studies inform us that homevoters' observed role in...

In diesem Beitrag zeigen wir, dass die gewachsene politische Distanz durch die Kreisgebietsreform 2011 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern mit höheren Stimmanteilen für die ALTERNATIVE FÜR DEUTSCHLAND (AfD) bei der darauffolgenden Landtagswahl einhergeht. Gemeinden, die besonders stark von der...

This paper investigates the 2001 referendum on the Allianz-Arena, a professional soccer stadium in Munich, Germany, with respect to lifestyle-specific voter preferences. Using political party affiliation and milieu probabilities as proxy variables, we find that lifestyle-specific preferences,...

I exploit a large natural experiment in Australia that saw the House of Representatives expand from 125 districts to 148 districts. This required substantial changes to electoral boundaries, which, for the first time, were determined by a body that was not subject to ministerial discretion. As a...

I study place based policies under local political economy constraints, asking whether transfers across regions can foster regional convergence. I show that, if local workers can vote over the within-region allocation of the transfers, these may be spent unproductively and be ineffective in...

This study investigates whether there is a link between the successful implementation of European co-hesion policy and the voters' attitudes towards the EU. Using the French presidential elections in 2017 as a case study, we do not solely consider regional funds expenditures but also its induced...

This paper shows that regional policies can decrease populist support. We focus on the "development objective" (Objective-1) of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), meant to support lagging-behind regions. For causal inference, we exploit three sources of quasi-exogenous variation in a...

This paper studies how income tax rates are determined and how they are related to government corruption in the form of fund capture. A model is presented where rich voters can block redistribution by buying the votes of some poor voters. In equilibrium there is only limited redistribution and...