Policy outcomes of single and double-ballot elections

Massimiliano Ferraresi (), Leonzio Rizzo () and Alberto Zanardi ()

International Tax and Public Finance, 2015, vol. 22, issue 6, 977-998

Abstract: We use data for all Italian municipalities from 2001 to 2007 to empirically test the extent to which two different electoral rules, which hold for small and large municipalities, affect fiscal policy decisions at local level. Municipalities with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants elect their mayors in accordance with a single-ballot plurality rule where only one list can support her/him, while the rest of the municipalities uses a runoff plurality rule where multiple lists can support her/him. Per capita total taxes, charges and current expenditure in large municipalities are lower than in small ones if the mayor of the large municipality does not need a broad coalition to be elected, otherwise the use of a single- or double-ballot rule does not make any difference in the policy outcome. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Federal budget; Local budget; Single-ballot; Double-ballot; Coalition; Multiple list; Regression discontinuity; H3; H21; H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10797-014-9344-x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Policy outcomes of single and double-ballot elections (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:22:y:2015:i:6:p:977-998

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10797/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10797-014-9344-x

Access Statistics for this article

International Tax and Public Finance is currently edited by Ronald B. Davies and Kimberly Scharf

More articles in International Tax and Public Finance from Springer, International Institute of Public Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().