Recent empirical studies show that U.S. states’ and local governments’ tax policy is copied among neighboring jurisdictions. We present empirical evidence on such tax mimicking among Belgian municipalities. Belgian data offer important advantages. The (589) municipalities operate within an...

[fre] Dans une série d'articles publiés au cours des années soixante-dix et quatre-vingt, J.-C. Hentsch propose une méthode qui devrait permettre de juger objective­ment de l'utilité de chacune des coupures constituant la monnaie d'un pays donné. Le présent article rapporte les...

Forecasts of the cyclically-adjusted primary government balance are, potentially, informative as to the stance of future fiscal policies. This is sustained by the fiscal surveillance procedure for Eurozone members since the reformed Stability and Growth Pact of 2005. However, the quality of...

Political fragmentation has been shown to be an important determinant of electoral turnout. We introduce an empirical approach that allows disentangling the impact of two dimensions of such fragmentation: the number of parties and the size inequalities between those parties. This is important as...

Governments often see it as their responsibility to support cultural life and at times spend a significant amount of resources in the pursuit of this goal. The present paper analyses whether and how municipalities influence each other in this decision to spend resources on the arts (using data...