Fiscal Transfers, Local Government and Entrepreneurship

Seminar abstract

Can local government spending spur entrepreneurial activity?

To answer this question we study a setting where, around multiple pre-determined and non-manipulable thresholds, municipalities with lower tax revenues receive direct and different monetary grants from the national budget.

Employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find a positive impact of fiscal transfers on the number of firms, especially sole proprietorships and small firms.

The impact is stronger in municipalities where the opposition is more involved in the legislative process or more parties are represented in the municipal council, and in regions where historical legacies shaped a more positive attitude towards entrepreneurship.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar is free to attend. Register your interest with the seminar organiser and find out how you can join.

This seminar will take place online on Wednesday 17 November 2021 at 2pm.

We encourage you to share this with you friends, classmates and colleagues.

Speaker bio

Piotr Danisewicz is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the School of Accounting and Finance, University of Bristol, and a Research Fellow at the Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich.

Previously, he held positions at Lancaster University and with the International Division of the Bank of England.

His research interests lie in the area of financial intermediation, financial technology, and entrepreneurship.

Piotr’s work has been published in the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Financial Intermediation.