Business taxes and the electoral cycle
The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the timing of elections affects tax policy choices. To do so, we exploit information on the German local business tax which is set autonomously by German municipalities. As the dates for local council elections vary across German states, the data allows...
| Autores: | , |
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2014 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repositorio: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:2445/119526 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/119526 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Eleccions locals Impostos Política econòmica Local elections Taxation Economic policy |
| Resumo: | The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the timing of elections affects tax policy choices. To do so, we exploit information on the German local business tax which is set autonomously by German municipalities. As the dates for local council elections vary across German states, the data allows us to disentangle effects related to the timing of elections from common trends. The findings support the notion of a political cycle in tax setting as the growth in local business tax rates is significantly reduced in the election year and the year prior to the election, while it significantly increases in the year after the election. This pattern turns out to be robust against a number of sensitivity checks. |
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