In the economic literature various political institutions designed to control the government have been analyzed. However, an important institution has been neglected so far: independent auditing institutions with an extended mandate to analyze the budget draft and individual policy proposals. We...

Divided government is not only the outcome of moderate voters’ electoral decision to balance party ideology in government, but a more general reaction of voters to a systematic control problem. Voters realize that term limited executives (i.e., “lame ducks”) cannot be held accountable due...

The ability of voters to use the available electoral instruments is crucial for the functioning of democracies. The paper shows that voters consider the institutional environment when making electoral decisions. Voters recognize that executives who face binding term limits (i.e., "lame ducks")...

The ability of voters to use the available electoral instruments is crucial for the functioning of democracies. The paper shows that voters consider the institutional environment when making electoral decisions. Voters recognize that executives who face binding term limits (i.e., "lame ducks")...

We aim to estimate the elasticity of voter turnout. We analyze how voters react to a change in voting costs. Some municipalities in the canton of Berne reduced voting costs by paying the postage of the return envelope when voters opt for postal voting. We find that paying the postage is...

In this paper, we present and illustrate novel data on more than a century of regulation in Switzerland. We provide quantitative measures for Swiss cantons on the annual stock of legally binding rules from 2006-2013 and on regulatory activity as reflected in the annual changes to such regulation...

The ability of voters to use the available electoral instruments is crucial for the functioning of democracies. The paper shows that voters consider the institutional environment when making electoral decisions. Voters recognize that executives who face binding term limits (i.e., lame ducks)...

We study the impact of fiscal revenue shocks on local fiscal policy. We focus on the very volatile revenues from the immovable property gains tax in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, and analyze fiscal behavior following large and rare positive and negative revenue shocks. We apply causal...

The traditional normative literature on fiscal federalism argues that redistributive policies should be centralized in order to avoid welfare- or tax-induced migration. However, recent evidence shows that even in a setup where the progressivity of the income tax schedule is centralized to an...