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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Federico Fabio Frattini (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how concurrent national and local elections affect the local political participation and competition. Leveraging a quasi-experimental framework provided by Italy’s staggered electoral timing, the paper employs a difference-in-differences design. Estimates reveal that municipalities holding concurrent elections exhibit lower levels of local participation and competition. Moreover, the concurrent election increases participation by candidates with nationally-established parties, while decreases participation with independent parties. This further translates into a higher votes share for nationally-established parties and a consequent higher probability of election. Elected mayors tend to have lower education and experience in office, while they are more likely to be from the municipality they were elected in. Further, elected mayors are able to attract more intergovernmental transfers, without substantially affecting local spending patterns. |
| Keywords: | Concurrent elections, Political Competition, Political Participation |
| JEL: | D72 H70 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2025.15 |
| By: | Brox, Enzo; Krieger, Tommy |
| Abstract: | We study how far-right mass rallies affect people's views about a city and thus location choices of nationals. To this end, we first exploit that the city of Dresden (Germany) unexpectedly experienced such rallies at the turn of the year 2014/15. Results from dyadic difference-in-differences and Synthetic Control analyses suggest that the number of (young) German adults who moved from another region to Dresden declined by around 10% due to the far-right mass protests. We complement our first analysis with a conjoint experiment where participants decide between two hypothetical cities. This experiment confirms that far-right rallies have a dissuasive effect and shows that left-wing people react stronger than right-wing people. It also reveals that far-right protests cause security concerns and concerns about finding like-minded people. The latter reaction is only observed for people that do not support the far right. |
| Keywords: | far-right movements, location decisions, internal migration, political protest, populism, regional competition for talent, reputation of cities, university students |
| JEL: | D72 I23 O15 P00 R23 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:327113 |
| By: | Germeshausen, Robert; Heim, Sven; Wagner, Ulrich J. |
| Abstract: | The rise of societal goals like climate change mitigation and energy security calls for rapid capacity growth in renewable electricity sources, yet citizens' support is put to a test when such technologies emit negative local externalities. We estimate the impact of wind turbine deployment on granular measures of revealed preferences for renewable electricity in product and political markets. We address potentially endogenous siting of turbines with an IV design that exploits quasi-experimental variation in profitability induced by subsidies. We find that wind turbines significantly reduce citizens' support locally, but this effect quickly fades with distance from the site. We assess policy instruments for enhancing citizens' support for renewable energy in light of our results. |
| Keywords: | renewable energy, wind power, public support, elections, externalities |
| JEL: | D12 D72 Q42 Q48 Q50 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:327111 |