Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Government Spending and Legislative Organization: Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany

Contents:

Author Info

  • Peter Egger

    (ETH Zurich)

  • Marko Koethenbuerger

    (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

This paper presents empirical evidence of a positive effect of council size on government spending using a data set of 2,056 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria over a period of 21 years. We apply a regression discontinuity design to avoid an endogeneity bias. In particular, we exploit discontinuities in the legal rule that relates population size of a municipality to council size to identify a causal relationship between council size and public spending, and find a robust positive impact of council size on spending. Moreover, we show that municipalities primarily adjust current expenditure in response to a rise in council size.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.econ.ku.dk/eprn_epru/Workings_Papers/wp-10-09.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics in its series EPRU Working Paper Series with number 2010-09.

as in new window
Length: 14 pages
Date of creation: Aug 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:kud:epruwp:10-09

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Øster Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark
Phone: (+45) 3532 4411
Fax: +45 35 32 30 00
Email:
Web page: http://www.econ.ku.dk/epru/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Legislative organization; Regression-discontinuity design; Government spending; Mayor-council system;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Wilbert van der Klaauw, 2002. "Estimating the Effect of Financial Aid Offers on College Enrollment: A Regression-Discontinuity Approach," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1249-1287, November.
  2. Pettersson-Lidbom, Per, 2012. "Does the size of the legislature affect the size of government? Evidence from two natural experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 269-278.
  3. Per Pettersson-Lidbom, 2008. "Do Parties Matter for Economic Outcomes? A Regression-Discontinuity Approach," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(5), pages 1037-1056, 09.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Tuukka Saarimaa & Janne Tukiainen, 2012. "Politics in Coalition Formation of Local Governments," SERC Discussion Papers 0102, Spatial Economics Research Centre, LSE.
  2. Hirota, Haruaki & Yunoue, Hideo, 2011. "Municipal mergers and special provisions of local council members in Japan," MPRA Paper 37485, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  3. Emanuele Bracco & Alberto Brugnoli, 2012. "Runoff vs. Plurality. The Effects of the Electoral System on Local and Central Government Behaviour," Working Papers 23767067, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
  4. Leonzio Rizzo & Alberto Zanardi, 2012. "Single vs double ballot and party coalitions: the impact on fiscal policy. Evidence from Italy," Working Papers 2012/33, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
  5. Florian Ade & Ronny Freier, 2011. "When Can We Trust Population Thresholds in Regression Discontinuity Designs?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1136, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  6. Hirota, Haruaki & Yunoue, Hideo, 2013. "Does local council size affect land development expenditure? Quasi-experimental evidence from Japanese municipal data," MPRA Paper 43723, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  7. Hirota, Haruaki & Yunoue, Hideo, 2012. "Local government expenditure and council size: Quasi-experimental evidence from Japan," MPRA Paper 42799, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kud:epruwp:10-09

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Sabine Fischer).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.