Is government ideology important for fiscal policy? I study this question with data from all German States over the period 1975-2005. To identify the effect of ideology, I rely on a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. I find that left-wing state governments spend more than state governments...

In federal countries, such as the U.S., the fiscal authority consists not of one, but many governments, with state governments accounting for a sizable share of expenditures. We analyze how state partisanship of politicians affects state fiscal policy and quantify the possible macroeconomic...

This paper examines how local governments adjust their spending, savings and taxes in response to a temporary revenue windfall generated by a housing boom and how they cope with the inevitable shortfall that appears during the bust. We focus on Spanish local governments given the intensity of...

A widespread view in the "political budget cycles" literature is that incumbent politicians seek to influence voters' perceptions of their competence and/or preferences by using the composition of the fiscal budget as a signalling tool. However, little is known about whether voters actually...

Is government ideology important for fiscal policy? I study this question with data from all German States over the period 1975-2005. To identify the effect of ideology, I rely on a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. I find that left-wing state governments spend more than state governments...

This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people's ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status of...

This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people’s ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status...

This paper examines how local governments adjust their spending, savings and taxes in response to a temporary revenue windfall generated by a housing boom and how they cope with the inevitable shortfall that appears during the bust. We focus on Spanish local governments given the intensity of...

Although pre-electoral political manipulation of the budget --- the political budget cycle (PBC) --- has been long investigated by scholars, empirical findings are mixed at best. This is partly because of the non-random nature of election timing. There also exist ongoing debates over how the...