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This paper examines the fiscal strategies adopted by all 308 Portuguese municipalities and explores the influence of political ideology on those strategies using a boosting machine learning approach. The authors employ a theoretical analysis of municipal taxation and public finance in Portugal, followed by an empirical application of the AdaBoost algorithm to a comprehensive dataset of municipal financial, tax, and demographic indicators. The findings indicate that while the boosting model accurately predict certain outcomes (the number of municipal employees), it fails to reliably predict the political ideology of the mayor from fiscal data. This suggests that a mayor’s partisan affiliation may not be strongly reflected in the municipality’s tax decisions. The paper provides an initial step towards understanding local tax decision-making, with implications for how political factors and competitive pressures shape municipal fiscal behaviour.

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Tax Strategy and Political Ideology in Portuguese Municipalities: An Application of the Boosting Technique

  • 会议论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年

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  • Rute Abreu,
  • Filipe Caetano,
  • Francisco Carreira,
  • Ana Clara Borrego,
  • Sara Nunes

摘要

This paper examines the fiscal strategies adopted by all 308 Portuguese municipalities and explores the influence of political ideology on those strategies using a boosting machine learning approach. The authors employ a theoretical analysis of municipal taxation and public finance in Portugal, followed by an empirical application of the AdaBoost algorithm to a comprehensive dataset of municipal financial, tax, and demographic indicators. The findings indicate that while the boosting model accurately predict certain outcomes (the number of municipal employees), it fails to reliably predict the political ideology of the mayor from fiscal data. This suggests that a mayor’s partisan affiliation may not be strongly reflected in the municipality’s tax decisions. The paper provides an initial step towards understanding local tax decision-making, with implications for how political factors and competitive pressures shape municipal fiscal behaviour.