Causes of local budget deficit

尽管取得了一些进展，但对地方政府财政赤字原因的研究仍被认为是欠发达的。结合社会经济、体制和以行为者为中心的变量的理论驱动的比较分析很少，德国联邦共和国尤其如此。因此，目前尚不清楚哪些因素可以解释各城市人均赤字的明显差异。这里提出的研究项目进入这一差距，并分析了社会经济，制度和以行为者为中心的变量对德国地方政府财政状况的影响。在以行动者为中心的新制度启发式之后，利益相关者的利益不仅被认为是由制度规范、标准利益和博弈论星座构成的，而且被认为是由个人对互动的取向和他们声称的身份构成的。通过对德国各联邦州进行定性和定量的比较，确定财政赤字的前因。为此，采用了大n方法。样本包括居民分别超过5 000和10 000的市镇。综合数据集包括在关键决策者中收集的财政数据、政治背景数据和调查数据，并由案例研究加以补充。由于在数据收集方面遇到了许多意想不到的困难，而且调查的范围扩大（更深入的个案研究、对122个地方议会进行额外的全面调查以及纳入2010年财政数据），原定两年的项目期限应延长6个月。这一额外的时间对于利用现有的独特数据集是必要的，因为该数据集首次汇集了宏观、中观和微观层面的数据。只有在这一时间范围内，数据集的统计分析才变得可行，从而可以从经验上检验文献中对财政赤字的众多理论解释，并将其与定性收集的过程数据联系起来。

Despite some progress, research scrutinizing the causes of the fiscal deficits in local government has to be considered as underdeveloped. Theory-driven comparative analyses integrating socio-economic, institutional and actor-centered variables are scarce, and this is especially true for the Federal Republic of Germany. Hence it is still unclear which factors explain the observable variance in per capita deficits among municipalities. The research project presented here steps into this gap and analyses the impact of socio-economic, institutional and actor-centered variables on the fiscal situation of German local governments. Following the actor-centered neo-institutional heuristic, the stakeholders interests are considered as framed not only by institutional norms, standard interests and game-theoretical constellations, but also by the individuals orientations towards interaction and their claimed identities. By comparing federal states in Germany using qualitative and quantitative methodology, the antecedents of fiscal deficits shall be identified. To do so, a large-n approach is taken. Included into the sample are municipalities with more than 5.000 respectively 10.000 inhabitants. The comprehensive data set includes fiscal data, political background data and survey data gathered among key decision makers is gathered and complemented by case studies. Owing to multiple unexpected difficulties in data collection and the expansion of the empirics (more in-depth case studies, an additional full survey of 122 local councils and the inclusion of the 2010 fiscal data), the scheduled project duration of two years should be prolonged by six month. This additional time is necessary to make use of the now available unique dataset which brings together macro-, meso- and micro-level data for the first time. Only within this time frame the statistical analysis of the dataset becomes feasible, allowing to empirically testing the numerous theoretical explanations of fiscal deficits to be found in literature and to link them to the processes data gathered qualitatively.