• mayors
• local policy
• electoral law
• regression discontinuity

The thesis focuses on the impact that electoral rules of Italian municipalities have on mayoral choices ahead elections. The existing literature suggests that electoral systems can have an impact on local socio-economic decisions, possibly through influencing political competition. By applying a regression discontinuity design around the 15,000 inhabitants threshold, that is the cut-off at which a change in the electoral law occurs, I assessed the impact on 40 response variables in years preceding the elections. My results show that single ballot induces savings in small municipalities, by reducing investments in education and increasing the degree of fiscal autonomy and revenues from intergovernmental transfers.