Author(s):
Alvarez, Ana Catarina Silva Dias
Date: 2020
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/94879
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): Public finance; Fiscal federalism; Property taxation; Political accountability; Public finance; Public finance; Fiscal federalism; Fiscal federalism; Property taxation; Property taxation; Political accountability; Political accountability; Domínio/Área Científica: Ciências Sociais: Economia e Gestão; Domínio/Área Científica: Ciências Sociais: Economia e Gestão; Domínio/Área Científica: Ciências Sociais: Economia e Gestão
Description
This thesis explores three reforms implemented in Portugal to obtain causal inference about the manifold impacts of the rules that shape local government behavior. The first chapter focuses on the electoral response to a property tax reform, aiming to promote a higher degree of decentralization and autonomy of municipalities. The second chapter tests the hypothesis of tax capitalization by exploring an unexpected reduction in the upper bound of the property tax rate. The last chapter - using an original dataset on mayors' characteristics - exploits a recent reform introducing mayoral term limits to identify its causal impact on political selection.
