Can providing citizens with information compensate for unreliable public services? We present a field-experimental evaluation of a program that provided households in Bangalore with advance notification of intermittently provided piped water. The implementers expected that increasing service...

Fiscal Decentralization Reforms and Local Government Efficiency: An Introduction -- Fiscal Decentralization in Bulgaria -- Fiscal Decentralization in the Czech Republic -- The Fiscal Decentralization in Hungary -- The Fiscal Decentralization in Poland -- The Fiscal Decentralization in Romania --...

This paper aims to test the existence of vertical interactions in terms of public spending between overlapping local jurisdictions in France using a data set of 110 French municipalities and their corresponding departments in 2001 and 2005. To do so, we consider that demand for municipal...

This paper investigates the local effects of mining on the quality of public services and on people's optimism about their future living conditions. It also assesses the mediating role of local institutions and local governments 'taxing rights in shaping the proximity-to-mine effects. The...