Bjoern Kauder

Supermajorities and Political Rent Extraction

Models of political competition portray political candidates as seeking the support of the median voter to win elections by majority voting. In practice, political candidates seek supermajorities rather than majorities based on support of the median voter. We study the political benefits from supermajorities using data from Bavaria, the largest German state. Members of the Bavarian parliament had been permitted to hire relatives as office employees but in the year 2000 the practice was prohibited, with exceptions that allowed continuation of employment of previously hired relatives. The circumstances provide an informative setting to relate political behavior to protection of incumbency. Our results show that the likelihood of politicians to hire relatives increased with the margin of the majority for the incumbent in the previous election. When the majority increased by one percentage point, the likelihood of hiring relatives increased by about one percentage point. Supermajorities thus facilitated political rent extraction.

The growth in military expenditure in Germany 1951–2011: did parties matter?

We examine whether government ideology was correlated with the growth in military expenditure in Germany over the period 1951–2011. Using various measures of government ideology, the results do not show any effect. The exception is an ideology measure based on the Comparative Manifesto Project (left-right scale): using this measure, the results show that the growth in military expenditure increased by about 2.4 percentage points, when the ideology variable (right-wing) increased by one standard deviation. This effect, however, is based on observations until the early 1960s and cannot be generalized. The major political parties agreed on how to evaluate international risks and threats. Government ideology retired to the background. We conjecture that the consensus among the major parties will persist – even if military spending needs to be increased in response to new international risks and threats.

Spatial Administrative Structure and Intra-Metropolitan Tax Competition

I investigate whether the spatial administrative structure of agglomerations is associatedwith local business tax rates in core cities of agglomerations. Using data for Germanmunicipalities, I define agglomerations based on distances and based on cumulativepopulation densities. The results show that the population share of the core in itsagglomeration is positively associated and the number of surrounding municipalities isnegatively associated with the tax rate of the core. When municipalities consolidate, thecore has the opportunity to increase the tax rate.

Manipulating Fiscal Forecasts: Evidence from the German States

We examine whether German state governments manipulated fiscal forecasts before elections. Our data set includes three fiscal measures over the period 1980-2014. The results do not show that electoral motives influenced fiscal forecasts in West German states. By contrast, East German state governments underestimated spending in pre-election years (compared to other years) by about 0.20 percent of GDP, tax revenues by about 0.36 percent of GDP, and net lending by 0.30 percent of GDP. Predicting low levels of spending and tax revenues, East German state governments thus underestimated the size of government in pre-election years.