Data and Code for: Political Parties Do Matter in U.S. Cities ... For Their Unfunded Pensions

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Christian Dippel, Ivey Business School, Western University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
ado			06/10/2021 06:52:PM
code			07/21/2021 04:16:PM
data			06/14/2021 07:15:PM
results			12/01/2020 01:52:PM
README.pdf	application/pdf	174 KB	06/14/2021 03:16:PM

Project Citation:

Dippel, Christian. Data and Code for: Political Parties Do Matter in U.S. Cities ... For Their Unfunded Pensions. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2022. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-07-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/E127661V1

Project Description

Summary: This paper studies public-sector pension obligations, the biggest fiscal challenge currently facing many U.S. cities. Employing a regression discontinuity design around close elections, benefit payments out of a city's public-sector pensions are shown to grow faster under Democratic-party mayors, while contributions into the pensions do not. Previous research showed that parties do not matter for a wide range of cities' fiscal expenditures, and explained this with voters imposing fiscal discipline. This paper replicates previous results, but shows that parties can matter for shrouded expenditure types that voters do not pay attention to, especially if they benefit well-organized interest groups.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Public-Sector Pensions

JEL Classification:
D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

Geographic Coverage: U.S. cities

Time Period(s): 1960 – 2015

Universe: Municipal Public-Sector Pension plans

Data Type(s): observational data

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Published Versions

V1 [2022-07-26]

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