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Publications (44)
How does fiscal austerity affect redistributive policies? We document that during austerity episodes, countries tend to increase marginal income tax rates on top earners, but not on average earners. We then show that, in response to an exogenously imposed fiscal rule, Italian municipalities increase local non-linear income taxes progressively. They...
Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and Euro Area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the right is most opposed to a more developed European fiscal...
Many countries consolidate their police forces by closing down local police stations. Police stations represent an important and visible aspect of the organization of police forces. We provide novel evidence on the effect of centralizing police offices through the closure of local police stations on crime outcomes. Combining matching with a differe...
Zusammenfassung
In einer Demokratie ist eine gut informierte Bevölkerung besonders wichtig. In den Perils-of-Perception-Studien wird untersucht, wie gut die deutsche Bevölkerung über wirtschaftliche Fakten informiert ist. Dabei sind die Fehlwahrnehmungen groß und Deutschland rangiert im Mittelfeld der fortgeschrittenen Volkswirtschaften. Es gibt ve...
The German constitutional fiscal rule (the „debt brake“) is increasingly subject to a reform debate that has intensified with the fiscal fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. This article presents survey evidence from the German state parliaments on views and preferences for the future of Germany’s fiscal rule. The survey among all 16 state parliamen...
This study explores the positions of economic experts from Central and Eastern European (CEE) Member States in the euro reform debate. Given the dominant voices from French and German politicians and academics in the European discourse, there is an obvious neglect for the positions of CEE countries. Our study tries to fill this gap with a large sur...
Voters dealing with jurisdictional merger decisions face a trade-off between economies of scale and preference costs. Larger jurisdictions could offer cost advantages, but the downside is that policies in larger units may be less aligned to voter preferences. Our study is the first to provide evidence on this trade-off on the individual level in an...
What are the effects of austerity on distributional policy? We exploit the autonomy of Italian municipalities in setting non-linear income taxes and the exogenous introduction of a fiscal rule to show that austerity increases income tax progressivity. Consistent with this evidence, we find that in a panel of countries austerity correlates with high...
Am 15. März 2020 fanden in Bayern die Kommunalwahlen statt – mitten in den Anfangswochen der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland. In etwa einem Fünftel der bayerischen Landkreise gab es zu diesem Zeitpunkt aber noch keinen bestätigten Corona-Fall. Wir vergleichen das Wahlverhalten in diesen Landkreisen mit bayerischen Landkreisen, in denen bereits Coro...
We analyze data from an author-conducted survey of members of the French and German parliaments on European Monetary Union reform preferences. We consider three potential drivers of preferences: nationality, ideology, and personal characteristics. For European Monetary Union policies like Eurobonds, the Fiscal Compact, and the European Central Bank...
German municipalities have substantial autonomy in setting taxes on two distinct tax bases: business profits and property values. We use this setting and a two-step approach to explore whether implemented tax policy is consistent with the seminal inverse-elasticity rule. First, we estimate the tax elasticity of the two tax bases using event-study a...
While many central governments amalgamate municipalities, mergers of larger county administrations are rare and hardly explored. In this article, we assess both fiscal and political effects of county mergers in two different institutional settings: counties act autonomously as upper-level local governments (Germany), or counties being decentralised...
Zusammenfassung
Seit Jahrzehnten werden kommunale Gebietskörperschaften fusioniert, in der Hoffnung auf Kosteneinsparungen und eine höhere Leistungsfähigkeit der Verwaltung. In diesem Beitrag geben Sebastian Blesse und Felix Rösel einen Überblick über die bestehende kausale Evidenz zu den Effekten von Gebietsreformen auf öffentliche Ausgaben, Effiz...
European Integration and Labor Market Policies: Is there a Consensus between French and German Members of National Parliaments?
This paper presents the results of a survey on the future of European integration conducted in the national parliaments of both France and Germany. In particular, we collected the opinions of members of national parliament...
Zusammenfassung
Die Autoren präsentieren und analysieren die Ergebnisse der ersten umfassenden repräsentativen Umfrage der deutschen Bevölkerung zu Fragen des deutschen Föderalismus und möglicher Reformoptionen. Die Umfrage wurde im Rahmen des Mannheimer German Internet Panel (GIP) im Jahr 2014 durchgeführt und umfasst die Themenfelder Schuldenbrem...
We analyze data from an author-conducted survey of members of the French and German parliaments on European Monetary Union reform preferences. We consider three potential drivers of preferences: nationality, ideology, and personal characteristics. For European Monetary Union policies like Eurobonds, the Fiscal Compact, and the European Central Bank...
We study the fiscal consequences of municipal mergers by making use of a large-scale merger reform in the German federal state of Brandenburg. This reform, which was implemented from 2001 to 2003, led to a substantial reduction in the number of municipalities. Individual mergers were heterogeneous across a number of dimensions, which allows us to c...
This paper examines whether revenue decentralization and direct external financial supervision affect the incidence and strength of political budget cycles, using a panel of Israeli municipalities during the period 1999-2009. We find that high dependence on central government transfers - as reflected in a low share of locally raised revenues in the...
The extant empirical evidence on the fiscal consequences of municipal mergers is ambiguous. We therefore revisit this question by making use of a merger reform in the German federal state of Brandenburg in 2003. In addition to identifying the causal effects of mergers on municipal expenditures by relying on a natural experiment, one novel contribut...
