Yardstick competition in German municipalities

Does increasing transparency improve fiscal policy behavior of local governments? One way this could take place is via Yardstick Competition between incumbents of neighboring municipalities. This paper contributes to the literature by introducing a simple model which employs probabilistic voting to show the effect of Yardstick Competition on the amount of political rents diverted from the tax revenue. Since additional rents lower the probability of being reelected, the incumbent will reduce equilibrium rents if voters use information on fiscal performance in similar municipalities to evaluate the incumbent's quality. I test this hypothesis on a panel dataset of municipal budget and electoral data in the german state of Northrine-Westphalia. I show evidence for Yardstick Competition in the local business and property tax rates. -- Kann zunehmende Transparenz im kommunalen Budgetprozess die fiskalpolitische Disziplin der politischen Entscheidungsträger verbessern? In dieser Arbeit wird ein positiver Modellrahmen entwickelt, anhand dessen die Wirkungsweise von steigen - der Transparenz auf das Entscheidungsverhalten von Kommunalpolitikern durch den Yardstick Competition Effekt dargestellt werden kann. Politiker reduzieren die Veruntreuung finanzieller Mittel, wenn ihr Verhalten von den Wählern relativ zur Leistung von Politikern in benachbarten Kommunen bewertet wird. Unter Anwendung von Methoden der räumlichen Ökonometrie auf kommunale Haushalts- und Wahldaten der Jahre 1989 bis 2004 wird gezeigt, dass die räumliche Korrelation in den Gewerbe- und Grundsteuerhebesätzen in Nordrhein-Westfalen auf die Existenz von Yardstick Competition zurückzuführen ist.transparency, local public finance, political economics, spatial econometrics

Swinging and tumbling of elastic capsules in shear flow

The deformation of an elastic micro-capsule in an infinite shear flow is studied numerically using a spectral method. The shape of the capsule and the hydrodynamic flow field are expanded into smooth basis functions. Analytic expressions for the derivative of the basis functions permit the evaluation of elastic and hydrodynamic stresses and bending forces at specified grid points in the membrane. Compared to methods employing a triangulation scheme, this method has the advantage that the resulting capsule shapes are automatically smooth, and few modes are needed to describe the deformation accurately. Computations are performed for capsules both with spherical and ellipsoidal unstressed reference shape. Results for small deformations of initially spherical capsules coincide with analytic predictions. For initially ellipsoidal capsules, recent approximative theories predict stable oscillations of the tank-treading inclination angle, and a transition to tumbling at low shear rate. Both phenomena have also been observed experimentally. Using our numerical approach we could reproduce both the oscillations and the transition to tumbling. The full phase diagram for varying shear rate and viscosity ratio is explored. While the numerically obtained phase diagram qualitatively agrees with the theory, intermittent behaviour could not be observed within our simulation time. Our results suggest that initial tumbling motion is only transient in this region of the phase diagram.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Adhesion of microcapsules

The adhesion of microcapsules to an attractive contact potential is studied theoretically. The axisymmetric shape equations are solved numerically. Beyond a universal threshold strength of the potential, the contact radius increases like a square root of the strength. Scaling functions for the corresponding amplitudes are derived as a function of the elastic parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Onsager model for a variable dielectric permittivity near an interface

Using a generalisation of an Onsager type approach, we are able to predict a dielectric permittivity profile of an inhomogeneous dipolar fluid in the presence of a dielectric interface. The reaction and cavity fields are calculated semi-analytically using bispherical coordinates. An asymptotic expression for the local permittivity is derived as a function of distance from the interface.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Molecular Physic

The structure of colloid-polymer mixtures

We investigate the structure of colloid-polymer mixtures by calculating the structure factors for the Asakura-Oosawa model in the PY approximation. We discuss the role of potential range, polymer concentration and polymer-polymer interactions on the colloid-colloid structure. Our results compare reasonably well with the recent experiments of Moussa\"{i}d et. al. for small wavenumber $k$, but we find that the Hansen-Verlet freezing criterion is violated when the liquid phase becomes marginal.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to appear in EuroPhys. Let

Crystallization and phase-separation in non-additive binary hard-sphere mixtures

We calculate for the first time the full phase-diagram of an asymmetric non-additive hard-sphere mixture. The non-additivity strongly affects the crystallization and the fluid-fluid phase-separation. The global topology of the phase-diagram is controlled by an effective size-ratio y_{eff}, while the fluid-solid coexistence scales with the depth of the effective potential well.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.