Published and forthcoming papers

The impact of monitoring on politicians' attendance: Evidence from the Swiss Upper House,
Journal of Public Economics, 239, 105235, 2024.
with Katharina Hofer 

In 2014, the Swiss Upper House switched from voting by show of hands to an electronic voting system, where individual decisions on specific exogenously defined vote types are published automatically. We leverage this update in monitoring technology for select votes to identify the impact of monitoring on politicians’ attendance within a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences methodology. Relying on video recordings of all sessions of the 49th Upper House legislature (2011–2015), we determine pre- and post-reform attendance rates during all votes and compare the change in attendance between votes affected and unaffected by the reform. Monitoring has a positive and significant effect on attendance particularly among legislators running for reelection, as compared to those retiring at the end of the term.

Political Competition and the Effectiveness of Gender Quotas: Evidence from Portugal,
Journal of Politics, 86(1), 2024.
with Jorge M. Fernandes and Miguel Won

How should parties that oppose gender quotas react to their adoption and to the new environment of political competition? Should they signal to voters that they are willing to compromise and accommodate the new status quo, or should they dismiss the growing importance of gender in politics instead? In this article, we unmask the indirect effects of gender quotas by arguing that electoral threats act as a political competition mechanism changing elites’ strategic calculations about women’s inclusiveness. Using legislative debates in Portugal, we show that parties that voted against the gender quota reform but face an electoral threat adopt women-friendly stances in order to signal to voters that they are responsive to changes in the salience of gender. In contrast, parties that opposed the gender quota reform but do not face an electoral threat engage in strategies that are dismissive of these new policies. 

Appointed public officials and local favoritism: Evidence from the German States,
Journal of Urban Economics, 124, 2021.
with Thushyanthan Baskaran

We study targeted redistribution by appointed state cabinet members (ministers) in Germany. Matching data on state ministers’ place of residence and state government employment data for the universe of western German municipalities for 1994–2013, we show within a difference-in-differences framework that municipalities that are the residence of a minister experience a higher annual growth rate in state government employment if they retain this status for more than one legislative term. Thus, our results suggest that appointed cabinet members engage in hometown favoritism. We discuss several potential mechanisms for this behavior. 

Closing the gender gap in legislative debates: The role of gender quotas,
Political Behavior, 2021.
with Jorge M. Fernandes and Miguel Won

Democratic societies increasingly look into gender quotas as a means to increase women’s representation in politics. Yet even as women occupy more seats, meaningful barriers may remain to their incorporation in the legislature. Our paper draws on quantitative and interview data from Portugal to explore patterns in women’s legislative participation before and after the adoption of a gender quota. While the gender gap in floor time decreases post-quota, important gender imbalances remain. After the quota, women remain underrepresented in the most politically salient legislative debates and are subject to stigmatization in floor access. Our findings suggest that gender quotas chip away at, but do not shatter, glass ceilings for women in politics. 

Lame ducks and local fiscal policy: Quasi-experimental evidence from Portugal,
Economic Journal, 130 (626), 511–533, 2020.

I use the introduction of mayoral term limits in Portugal to identify how an exogenous variation in eligibility for office affects policy decisions. Relying on a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach, I find that term-limited incumbents pursue more conservative fiscal policies than those who are eligible for re-election. Heterogeneous effects show that the treatment effects primarily reflect the behaviour of right-leaning, term-limited incumbents. Results are in line with a model in which right-leaning officeholders try to maintain a good reputation by pleasing an electorate prone to redistribution while they are eligible, but adopt policies closer to their true preferences when term limited. 

Female Political Representation and Substantive Effects on Policies: A Literature Review,
European Journal of Political Economy, 63, 2020. *Invited literature review*
with Zohal Hessami

The share of women in political offices has increased considerably over the past few decades in almost every country in the world. Does this matter for policy outcomes? This is the first paper to provide a literature review on the substantive effects of female representation on policies. In developing countries, the increase in female political representation has caused a better provision of public goods, especially with regard to education and health. In developed countries, higher female representation has not affected public policies as measured by spending patterns. However, more recent evidence shows that female representation has induced changes in parliamentary deliberations and specific policy choices (e.g. more public child care) that may not be reflected in the observable composition of public spending. Finally, higher female representation has improved institutional quality by reducing corruption and rent-extraction by those in power. 

Identifying the source of incumbency advantage through a constitutional reform,
American Journal of Political Science, 61:3, 657-670, 2017.

This study provides one of the first causal estimates of both the personal and partisan incumbency advantages. Using data on six local elections taking place during the last 20 years in 278 municipalities in Portugal, it relies on a reform introducing mayoral term limits as a natural experiment that creates exogenous variation on the incumbency status of officeholders while holding the incumbency status of the party constant. A new methodology combining two quasi-experimental methods, the regression discontinuity and the difference-in-discontinuities designs, allows for a credible estimation of the independent personal and partisan returns to incumbency. Results causally identify the personal effect as the driver of the incumbency advantage. 

Electoral thresholds and political representation,
Public Choice, 169, 117-136, 2016.
with Thushyanthan Baskaran

We rely on a reform in the German federal state of Hesse that abolished a 5 % electoral threshold for local elections to study the effects of electoral thresholds on political representation. The elimination of the threshold had, on average, a stronger effect on municipalities with larger councils since implicit (also known as effective) electoral thresholds are inversely correlated with council size. Using a dataset that includes all 426 Hessian municipalities over the period 1989–2011 and exploiting discontinuities in a state law that maps populations exogenously to council size, we implement a difference-in-discontinuities design. Our results show that the reform had large psychological effects that eventually improved the electoral prospects of (relatively small) local parties. In the short-run, however, the vote and seat shares of the large national parties increased. We offer some explanations for this finding. 

Electoral competition and endogenous political institutions: Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany,
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 122, 43-61, 2016.
with Thushyanthan Baskaran

Do established parties change political institutions to disadvantage new political actors if the latters’ electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal state of Hesse. The experiment is an electoral reform for local elections that improved the electoral prospects of smaller parties and party rebels. However, local politicians from the large mainstream parties could adjust municipal political institutions in such a way as to counteract this effect of the reform. One such institutional adjustment was to reduce the size of the local council because a reduction in council size raises the implicit electoral threshold and thus disadvantages especially smaller parties. Using a dataset that covers all 426 Hessian municipalities over the period 1989–2011, we document with a difference-in-discontinuities design that municipalities where the electoral competitiveness of smaller parties improved more after the reform saw a larger reduction in their council size. Hence, established parties appear to erect barriers to entry by adjusting political institutions once new political actors become viable electoral alternatives. 

The economics and empirics of tax competition: A survey and lessons for the EU,
Erasmus Law Review, 7:1, 2014. *Invited literature review*
with Thushyanthan Baskaran

We survey the theoretical and empirical literature on local and international tax competition in Economics. On the basis of this survey, we discuss whether EU countries should harmonise tax policies to prevent a race to the bottom. Much of the evidence suggests that tax competition does not lead to significant reductions in tax revenues. Therefore, we conclude that tax coordination is in all likelihood unnecessary to prevent inefficiently low levels of taxation in the EU. But since the evidence against the adverse effects of tax competition is not unambiguous, we also discuss whether intergovernmental transfers might be a less invasive means than outright tax harmonisation to prevent a race to the bottom.