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    Local government fiscal policy, social capital and electoral payoff: evidence across Italian municipalities

    Batinti, A. and Andriani, Luca and Filippetti, Andrea (2019) Local government fiscal policy, social capital and electoral payoff: evidence across Italian municipalities. Kyklos: International Review For Social Science 72 (4), pp. 503-526. ISSN 0023-5962.

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    Abstract

    Citizens’ attitudes and reactions to policymakers’ decisions depend on several factors, including informal institutions. The novelty of this paper is to use social capital as a moderator factor to shed light on the relationship between fiscal policies and electoral outcomes. We investigate this relationship using a sample of 6,000 Italian municipalities over the period 2003-2012 and use a Conditional Logit Matching model comparing incumbents to challengers’ characteristics within each election. We find that social capital increases the odds of the re-election of incumbent mayors who adopted a local fiscal policy more oriented towards capital investment (versus current expenditure) and towards property tax (versus income surcharge). This suggests that social capital encourages governmental functions and public policies improving long-term economic commitments, institutional transparency, and accountability. It also shows that decentralization works relatively better with social capital.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at the link above. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Social Capital, Municipal Elections, Local Government Fiscal Policies
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Research Centres and Institutes: Innovation Management Research, Birkbeck Centre for
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 10 Apr 2019 16:36
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:50
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/27147

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