What makes policymaking similar or different across local governments? In this paper, we explore the determinants of similarity in local policymaking and quantify the deviation of local budgets from expected norms based on local characteristics. Public budgets are considered the standard proxy for government policy, yet standard public economic research usually focuses on a few of the main budget accounting features. AI tools allow us to examine the full budget structure. We find that similarity is mostly associated with the size and demographic composition, rather than political characteristics. Next, we generate a Municipal Fiscal Divergence Index (MFDI), which quantifies the deviation of local budgets from expected norms based on local characteristics. We show that MFDI is associated with political incentives, i.e., it is lower in the year preceding an election, complementing the existing evidence on political budget cycle.

Using the Covid-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, we examine gender differences in public funds allocation to childcare in Italy, one of the first countries severely hit by the crisis. We analyze close mixed-gender races in Italian local elections in small municipalities without gender quotas from 2016 to 2023. Our findings show that pre-Covid-19 female mayors spent more on childcare than male mayors, in line with the substantive representation hypothesis. However, during the pandemic, the gender gap closed, as male politicians increased spending, a trend that continued post-pandemic. Results reflect a change in voters’ preferences, as they are driven by male politicians facing re-election incentives and municipalities with more telework during the pandemic.

This paper studies the impact of female leaders during a migration crisis. In particular, I examine female mayors in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia during the intake of Ukrainian refugees in 2022/23. I use granular data on compliance with the municipal refugee allocation quota and data on the municipal election of 2020. The identification strategy is a local difference-in-differences approach based on close mixed-gender races for the mayorship. Female mayors comply less with the allocation quota than male mayors in response to the crisis. The effect is not driven by other mayor characteristics or the fiscal capacity of municipalities. Also, there is no difference in the frequency of refugee topics in council meetings. Instead, I argue that strong electoral competition is a plausible mechanism inducing lower compliance of female mayors.

This paper explores the connection between jurisdictional fragmentation and sprawl. We utilize Finnish municipal mergers as a quasi-experiment which induces exogenous variation in the number of local jurisdictions in a given area. We are able to draw on rich register data providing granular location information for the full population of Finnish residents. We compare the location of new buildings (and their residents) in the actual mergers to the location of new buildings in a control group of hypothetical mergers simulated from the pre-merger municipality map in a difference-in-differences framework. When using our full sample, we do not find statistically significant effects on the location of newly constructed residential buildings. However, in smaller municipalities new single-family and row houses were built about 10% or 2 km closer to the new center. These effects materialize after two full council terms or roughly ten years and are driven by spatially compact and populous mergers.