In Italy, in 2011 the Superbollo tax was introduced for newly registered cars exceeding 185 kW. Although the aim of the tax was not to reduce CO2 emission as it was actually aimed at increasing government revenues during the economic crisis, we show that it had significant and unexpected impacts...

This paper provides a simple model to explain effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on policy choices and election outcomes. We derive precise predictions that, as long as voters attribute most of the credit for providing public goods to the local government: (i)...