The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of mayor's characteristics (education, experience and gender) on fiscal indicators of Brazilian municipalities. We use regression discontinuity and the outcomes of close elections to identify causal effects for 2000, 2004 and 2008. We find...

Smart Cities is a widely discussed topic in the social sciences. At first, awareness of Smart Cities in society was based mainly on the fact that these are cities that use modern information and communication technology (ICT) to ensure the provision of public services to their citizens. However,...

Spain has a population distribution dispersed in small population centres where 60% of municipalities have less than 1,000 inhabitants. This situation generates a financial and functional incapacity to guarantee the successful and efficient provision of local public services. In order to fulfil...

The paper examines the political business cycle at the municipal level in the Czech Republic using data for 205 municipalities in the period 2001-2007. We introduce empirical models based on fixed-effects panel data regression testing the capital and current expenditure manipulation prior to...