Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name:  Revelli, Federico  
Author-Email: federico.revelli@unito.it 
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Turin
Author-Workplace-Homepage: http://www.est.unito.it/
Title: Tax Limits and Local Democracy
Abstract: Based on a theoretical model where state limits on local government policy elicit a move from private 
value (position issue) to common value (valence issue) voting, I exploit exogenous variation in tax limitation 
rules in over 7,000 Italian municipalities during the 2000s to show that fiscal restraints provoke a fall in voter 
turnout and number of mayor candidates, and a rise in elected mayors’ valence proxy and win margins. The evidence is 
compatible with the hypothesis of hierarchical tax imitations fading the ideological stakes of local elections and 
favoring valence-based party line crossing, thus questioning the influential accountability postulate of the
fiscal decentralization lore 
Length: 42 pages
Creation-Date: 2013-07
File-URL: http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/allegati/wp2013dip/wp_36_2013.pdf
File-Format: Application/PDF
Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201336