•   •   •   •

Download the Paper (251 K, PDF file) - December 13, 2006 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing.

ABSTRACT:
The intention of this paper is to analyse how audit courts and local autonomy affect political discussion, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a broad variety of potential factors focusing on Switzerland, due to its variety of audit court competences and its strong decentralised structure. With data from the World Values Survey 1995-1997 (Swiss data 1996) evidence has been found that a higher audit court competence and a lower level of centralization is correlated with a higher level of political discussion. Thus, the results in Switzerland suggest that such institutions help improve citizens’ willingness to acquire information costs and discuss political matters.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Benno Torgler and Christoph A Schaltegger, "The Determinants of Political Discussion: How important are audit courts and local autonomy?" (December 13, 2006). Berkeley Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series. Paper 198.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/blewp/art198