The Dynamic Response of Municipal Budgets to Revenue Shocks
利用德国财政均衡计划中人口普查修订引发的准实验变化，研究市政预算对政府间拨款冲击的调整速度与对称性，发现支出调整滞后但长期对称，税收调整尤为缓慢，飞纸效应可能仅为短期现象。
We study the fiscal and tax response to intergovernmental grants, exploiting quasi-experimental variation within Germany's fiscal equalization scheme triggered by census revisions of population counts. Municipal budgets do not adjust instantly. Instead, spending and investments adapt within five years to revenue gains, while the adjustment to losses is more rapid. Yet the long-run response is symmetric. The tax response is particularly slow, stretching over more than a decade. Well-known empirical anomalies such as the so-called flypaper effect may thus reflect a short-run phenomenon, while long-run fiscal behavior appears more consistent with standard theories of fiscal federalism.