Do Local Elections Affect the Spending of Intergovernmental Transfers? Evidence from Germany's Stimulus Package of 2009

45 Pages Posted: 3 Jan 2024

See all articles by Yannick Bury

Yannick Bury

University of Freiburg

Lars P. Feld

Walter Eucken Institute; University of Freiburg - College of Economics and Behavioral Sciences; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Abstract

In this paper, we study whether local spending of intergovernmental grants is influenced by mayoral elections in the grant receiving municipality. We exploit the implementation of the German federal government’s second economic stimulus package of 2009 (K2) in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg as natural experiment. In the context of this package, all municipalities in Baden-Wuerttemberg received lump-sum grants for local public investment spending. Applying a difference-in-differences and instrumental variables approach to ensure exogeneity of the decision of mayors to run for re-election, we provide evidence that, in the absence of an election, K2 grants led to an increase in a municipality’s spending on long-run investment, while municipalities in which the incumbent mayor stood for re-election used grants to increase both, long-run and rapidly visible short-run investment expenditures. Moreover, we provide evidence in favor of the flypaper effect for all municipalities, except for those in which the incumbent mayor did not seek re-election.

Keywords: Intergovernmental Grants, Flypaper Effect, Political Budget Cycles

Suggested Citation

Bury, Yannick and Feld, Lars P., Do Local Elections Affect the Spending of Intergovernmental Transfers? Evidence from Germany's Stimulus Package of 2009. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4682942 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4682942

Yannick Bury

University of Freiburg ( email )

Germany

Lars P. Feld (Contact Author)

Walter Eucken Institute ( email )

Goethestrasse 10
Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg D-79100
Germany

University of Freiburg - College of Economics and Behavioral Sciences ( email )

Freiburg, D-79085
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

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