Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First,...

This paper estimates the effect of political power on tax policies in municipal councils under a proportional election system. The main challenge in estimating the causal effect of parties on policy is to isolate the effect of power from underlying voter preferences and the selection effect of...

The number of parties in government is usually considered to increase spending. We show that this is not necessarily the case. Using a new method to detect close election outcomes in multi-party systems, we isolate truly exogenous variation in the type of government. With data from...

This paper studies the effect of attending a high-quality secondary school on subsequent educational outcomes. The analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study in which we observe children when they make their secondary school choice (between ages 10-12) and later when...

Die lang anhaltende positive konjunkturelle Lage hat auch zu einer Erholung der kommunalen Finanzen geführt. Diese Entwicklung verdeckt aber strukturelle Probleme. Die regionalen Relationen in der deutschen Wirtschaftsstruktur lassen sich nur schwer verändern, sodass die Steueraufteilung...

Die kommende Rezession hat über die Gewerbe- und Einkommensteuer direkte Auswirkungen auf die Gemeindefinanzen. Infolge der unterjährigen Vorauszahlungen werden diese Rückgänge bereits kurzfristig wirksam. Die Autoren schätzen die finanziellen Effekte unter Berücksichtigung von Änderungen...