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Essay 1 (with Mikael Elinder): We show that house prices in general did not respond to a large cut in the property tax in Sweden. Our estimates are based on rich register data covering more than 100,000 sales over a time period of two and a half years. Because the Swedish property tax is national and thus unrelated to local public goods, our setting is ideal for causal identification of the property tax on house prices. Our result that house prices did not respond to the tax cut at the time of implementation cannot be explained by early capitalization at the time of announcement. Two other stories appear to explain our results. First, it is possible that house buyers expect an offsetting increase in the supply of housing. Second, house buyers might simply not understand how the tax cut affects total future costs of owning a house. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to disentangle the two mechanisms, and we must therefore conclude that both may be relevant. Essay 2:  I investigate government consumption smoothing (sensitivity) under a balanced budget rule in Swedish municipalities. In general, I find Swedish municipalities to be highly consumption sensitive. Municipalities consume 87.6% out of predicted current revenues in the time period leading up to the implementation of the balanced budget rule, and they consume 76.3% out of predicted current revenue in thetime period following the implementation. Fiscally weak municipalities are found to be more consumption sensitive than fiscally strong municipalities. Very weak municipalities have become more consumption sensitive compared with very strong municipalities since the implementation of the balanced budget rule. Thus, I find indicative evidence that both credit market constraints and formal budget rules such as balanced budget rules increase municipal consumption sensitivity Essay 3: Using the Swedish municipal sector as my political laboratory, I study the effect of a coalition partner on policy outcomes. I use a version of Regression-Discontinuity Design (RDD) specifically suited to proportional systems to define close elections, which can be used for identifying the effect of the Left Party as coalition partner to the Social Democrats. The Left Party is found to have a positive and medium sized effect on the municipal income tax rate. The positive effect is in line with what we expect given the policy preferences of Left Party representatives, but also given the predictions from political fragmentation theory. I find no effects on expenditures or debt, and the negative result for investments is not robust. Essay 4 (with Linuz Aggeborn): In a model where voters and politicians have different preferences for how much to spend on basic welfare services contra immigration, we conclude that established politicians that are challenged by right-wing populists will implement a policy with no spending on immigration if the cost of immigration is high enough. Additionally, adjustment to right-wing populist policy is more likely when the economy is in a recession. Voters differ in their level of private consumption in such a way that lower private consumption implies higher demand for basic welfare services at the expense of immigration, and thus stronger disposition to support right-wing populist policies. We propose that this within-budget-distributional conflict can arise as an electorally decisive conflict dimension if parties have converged to the median voter on the size-of-government issue. / <p>Felaktigt isbn: 978-91-85519-61-3</p>

The overall objective of the thesis is to investigate needs and incentives of all income/wealth groups in order to explore ways and means to remedy the excessive economic inequality. A closer examination of individual decisions across richer and poorer households allows us to recognize conflicts of wants, needs and values and subsequently to draw recommendations for future policies. The first chapter examines households' preferences over the redistribution of wealth resources. The preferences of voting households are restricted by agents' present and future resource constraints. The wealth resources vary over the business cycle, which affects the grounds for speculations of voting households. We augment the standard Real-Business-Cycle (RBC) model by the majority voting on lump-sum redistribution employing a balanced government budget. Our findings indicate that for the usual elasticity of labor supply both transfers' level and share of output are procyclical, with the procyclicality increasing in the discrepancy between richer and poorer households. In the second chapter we analytically demonstrate that all economic agents face subsistence costs that hinder economic and financial decisions of the poor. We find that the standard two-asset portfolio-selection model with a time-invariant subsistence component in the common-across agents Stone-Geary utility function is capable of explaining qualitatively and quantitatively three empirical regularities: (i) increasing saving rates in wealth, (ii) rising risky portfolio shares with wealth, (iii) more volatile consumption growth of the richer. On the contrary, &quot;keeping-up-with-the-Joneses&quot; utility with a time-varying weighted mean consumption produces identical saving rates and portfolio asset shares across richer and poorer agents, failing to match the micro data. Finally, in the third chapter we use Epstein-Zin-Weil recursive preferences altered to include subsistence costs, as this form of utility function enables trade-off between stability and safety. We pursue an analytical investigation of a more complex multi-asset portfolio-choice model with perfectly insurable labor risk and no liquidity constraints and find further support of the data evidence. If households' total resources are anticipated to increase over time, poorer agents can afford to gradually escape subsistence concerns by choosing lower saving rates and accepting only minor portfolio risks as their consumption hovers close to the subsistence needs. The calibration part of the model economy shows that analytical results can quantitatively reconcile the data, too.

[pt] Os três ensaios que compõem esta tese, têm como objetivo analisar o funcionamento do federalismo fiscal no Brasil. O primeiro analisa as tendências de longo prazo no grau de centralização e no crescimento do governo e sua relação durante o século XX. O achado mais importante deste ensaio é que os processos de descentralização fiscal promovidos pelas Constituições de 1946 e de 1988 aceleraram o crescimento do governo. Esses processos de descentralização provocaram crises no nível federal, que levaram o governo central a aumentar sua receita tributária para compensar a perda de receitas derivada da descentralização de recursos fiscais. Do outro lado, essa descentralização provocou o crescimento da despesa dos estados e municípios, que não foi compensado pela redução da despesa do governo federal. O segundo ensaio analisa a utilização de transferências intergovernamentais como mecanismo de financiamento dos níveis inferiores de governo. Esse ensaio desenvolve um modelo analítico para explicar o efeito expansivo das transferências sobre a despesa das unidades receptoras, conhecido como flypaper effect, e as diferenças regionais na sua intensidade. Usando um modelo de parámetros variando no espaço, o estudo demonstra empíricamente a presença do flypaper effect nas finanças dos municípios brasileros e suas diferenças regionais. Finalmente, o terceiro estuda os determinantes político institucionais do comportamento fiscal dos estados durante o período 1985-1997. O ensaio mostra a existência de ciclos políticos eleitorais, a influência expansionista da fragmentação do sistema partidário sobre a postura fiscal dos estados, a disciplina fiscal imposta pela da participação política da população e o fato de que que administrações estaduais de esquerda tendem a adotar posturas fiscais mais expansionistas do que as adotadas por administrações estaduais de centro ou de direita. / [en] The three essays in this dissertation analyze fiscal federalism in Brazil. The first studies the long run trends of the fiscal centralization and the size of government and their relationship during the XX Century. The most important finding of the first essay is that the process of decentralization inspired by the 1946 and 1948 Constitutions led to an overall expansion of government activities (at the federal, state, and municipal levels). The increase in state and municipal expenditures - because of the decentralization of fiscal resources - was not matched by an equivalent reduction in federal expenditures. Because federal expenditures did not decrease accordingly, and because the decentralization of fiscal resources resulted in a loss of federal revenues, the federal government needed to increase taxes in order to narrow the deficit. The second essay analyzes the use of intergovernmental transfers to finance lower levels of government. The essay develops an analytical model to explain both the expansive effects of transfers on the expenditures of recipient governments, called the flypaper effect. as well as reasons for their regional differences. Using an space-parameter varying estimation, the study empirically demonstrates the expansive effects of intergovernmental and detects their regional differences in Brazilian local governments finances. Finally, the third essay argues that political cycles strongly influenced the fiscal behavior of Brazilian states between 1985 and 1997. The study confirms the existence of political cycles, the influence of political fragmentation, the fiscal discipline induced by the participation of the population and that left wing administrations tended to adopt more expansionary fiscal policies than center or right wing administrations.

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民主國家中選舉是獲得政治職位、聲望或權力的主要途徑之一，有許多因素會影響選舉結果，其中選舉制度是決定在位者與挑戰者去留的關鍵，決定如產生當選者，選舉制度往往會影響候選人的參選動機、競選方式、選民的投票行為，甚至會造成不同類型的政黨政治。本研究主要探究立委選舉從第七屆開始實行單一選區兩票制後，區域立委候選人的政治立場相較於過去在複數選區單記不可讓渡投票制下，是否有所不同或發生改變。本研究以兩岸議題為例，以第五屆及第七屆區域立法委員候選人為分析單位，並依其選舉公報採內容分析法為研究焦點。本研究有幾個研究發現：首先、選制改革有相當程度反映在屆別的差異上，對立委候選人兩岸立場造成影響；其次、雖然新選制下立委候選人提出更多的兩岸政見，但所提出的兩岸政見，新選制相較於舊選制，不但統獨立場趨中，且論述語氣略微和緩，此一發現支持中位選民定理，也就是說，在單一選區相對多數決制之下，立委候選人的兩岸議題不管在方向或是程度上，相較SNTV制度均有往中間靠攏的趨勢，意即新選制下的立委候選人在政見立場方向，是符合理論預期往意識形態光譜中間移動，傾向提出方向趨中且統獨維持現狀或中立的兩岸政見。 / In democratic country, election is the main approach for the politicians to receive position, reputation, and power. Many factors affect the result. Electoral system is one of the key causes to determine who-incumbent and challenger- will win the election. In addition, electoral systems also affect the process of producing winner, the candidates’ motive and campaign, the electorate’s voting behaviors. and even different types of party politics. This paper targets on the district legislators’ behaviors. Do their behaviors change after the electoral reform transiting from SNTV to Single-District Two-Votes System? To be more specific, I focus on the fifth and seventh terms of legislators as the analysis unit, and explore their attitudes or campaign platform on Cross-Strait issue, which are published on the campaign communique. I used the content analysis to analyze the campaign communique. There are several findings implied from this research. First, electoral system indeed affects legislators’ positions on Cross-Strait issues. There is significant difference between the fifth and seventh terms of legislators. Second, comparing with the fifth term, although the seventh term of legislators propose more Cross-Strait-related campaign platform, their attitudes are more moderate. This finding supports the median voter theorem. Under the Single-District System, comparing with SNTV, legislators will stand on moderate position on Cross-Strait issue, no matter on direction or intensity. In conclusion, the findings fit to my expectation that the seventh term of legislators stand on moderate position on the political spectrum. They are incline to propose more neutral campaign platform. They prefer maintaining the status quo to unification or independence.

Populism as a phenomenon is increasing in Europe. This study is therefore centred on howpopulist parties affect mainstream parties when entering the parliament. Moreover this studyresearches how party behaviour theories such as the median voter theorem and cartel partytheory explains mainstream parties' transition on the political and ideological scale when apopulist party is included in the parliament. This study aims to identify populistic discourse in Swedish parties election manifestos. Additionally, examine if the degree of populisticdiscourse differs from the year 2010 when the populist party entered the parliament, the yearof 2018 and the year of 2022 when the populist party entered an alliance with the government.The methodical approach for this research has been a qualitative content analysis. The categories for populist communication strategy attempts to contribute with an operationalization, a measuring instrument of populism in the empirical material. Moreoverthe categories is based on Jan Jagers and Steffan Walgraves theory surrounding populism as a political communication-style. The eight units of analysis are the election manifestos of the Swedish parties: The christ democratic party, the moderate party and the sweden democrats. The empirical research shows that populism as a communication style appears within the election manifestos and that the degree of populist rhetoric differs within the mainstream parties from when the populist party entered the parliament in 2010 and government alliancein 2022.