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This paper studies how the system by which mayors are elected impacts mayoral accountability and their provision of public goods. To do so, we analyze policing and crime incidence under mayors directly elected by voters and under mayors appointed by an elected body. Our identification strategy exploits a natural experiment provided by the introduction in 2005 of direct mayoral elections in the municipalities of one region of Belgium, Wallonia. Estimating a difference-in-differences model with a rich dataset registering locally-reported crimes from 2000 to 2012, our results show a post-reform decrease in overall crime between 4.9% and 5.7%, depending on the specification. Our results further suggest that more accountable mayors prefer fighting certain type of crimes more intensely, rather than increasing police efficiency overall. Lastly, our results show that the post-reform benefits we observe dissolve when the management of local police has to be coordinated among neighboring mayors, especially if they come from different political parties.

We study the relationship between major religious denominations and individuals' levels of education, using the World Values Survey. In a first step, running country-by-country regressions, we report first-time evidence that no single denomination has a universal effect on education. Each denomination has a positive and statistically significant effect in some countries, a negative and statistically significant effect in others, and a statistically insignificant effect elsewhere. In a second step, we relate the sign of the impact of a denomination in a country to whether the denomination is a minority in that country. We find that denominations that are a minority in a country are more likely to be associated with a higher level of education, and less likely to be associated with a lower level of education in that country. In both steps, the findings are independent from the specification of the regressions used in the first stage to determine the sign of the impact of denominations on educational outcomes. The finding of the second step is moreover robust to defining minority denominations using various thresholds. It is robust to controlling for whether the denomination is a state religion, for the country's level of democracy, per capita GDP, or level of education, to introducing denomination- and country- fixed effects, and to controlling for the identity of the largest other denomination in the country.

We study the relationship between major religious denominations and individuals' levels of education, using the World Values Survey. In a first step, running country-by-country regressions, we report first-time evidence that no single denomination has a universal effect on education. Each denomination has a positive and statistically significant effect in some countries, a negative and statistically significant effect in others, and a statistically insignificant effect elsewhere. In a second step, we relate the sign of the impact of a denomination in a country to whether the denomination is a minority in that country. We find that denominations that are a minority in a country are more likely to be associated with a higher level of education, and less likely to be associated with a lower level of education in that country. In both steps, the findings are independent from the specification of the regressions used in the first stage to determine the sign of the impact of denominations on educational outcomes. The finding of the second step is moreover robust to defining minority denominations using various thresholds. It is robust to controlling for whether the denomination is a state religion, for the country's level of democracy, per capita GDP, or level of education, to introducing denomination- and country- fixed effects, and to controlling for the identity of the largest other denomination in the country. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published