We study the impact of a one-off exogenous fiscal windfall on local public finances in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland. The windfall was due to the IPO of Glencore on the London Stock Exchange in 2011. As a result, its CEO paid an extraordinary tax bill of approximately CHF 360 million....

We propose a novel approach for causal mediation analysis based on changes-in-changes assumptions restricting unobserved heterogeneity over time. This allows disentangling the causal effect of a binary treatment on a continuous outcome into an indirect effect operating through a binary...

Fiscal decentralization leads to a more efficient allocation of public fund and restricts the government to exploit the tax base. However, standard theory also suggests strong negative distributional effects and thus, centralized redistribution is proposed. This trade-off between efficiency and...

Public Auditors are fundamental institutions to supervise government agents. Without accurate information principals would find it hard to make adequate decisions. Since agents face strong incentives to misreport, competent audits of financial information are crucial. This paper is the first...