The zero lower bound era introduced a new perspective on the functionality of fiscal rules. With such low interest rates, the argument goes, extending debt financed public investment spending would be reasonable and thus existing fiscal rules too restrictive. Using data of Swiss cantonal public...

We explore the effects of decentralization on education and health in Ethiopia using an original database covering all of the country’s regions and woredas (local governments). Ethiopia is a remarkable case in which war, famine and chaos in the 1970s-80s were followed by federalization,...

When deciding on the social desirability of public investment, the cost of a project is sometimes adjusted by a factor known as the Marginal Cost of Public Funds (MCPF) which captures the cost of raising public funds through distortionary taxation. However, there is no scholarly consensus on...

This paper analyzes the impact of infrastructure investment on tax revenues and on the economy of the region. In 1991, the Kyushu high-speed rail line was constructed and was completed in 2003. In 2004, the rail line started operating from Kagoshima to Kumamoto. The entire line was opened in...

In this paper, we examine the impact of institutional quality on the returns on key drivers of economic growth in 230 European Union (EU) NUTS-2 regions from 2009 to 2017. To estimate region-specific elasticities, we employ a latent class modelling approach, considering the quality of government...

The primary objective of this article is to answer the following two research questions: has the growing public debt of state governments promoted increased public investment? If the answer is yes, then does any increase in public investment lead to more growth in the Mexican states? Dynamic...

This paper analyses the impact of fiscal rules on different public spending categories, namely public expenditure and investment, at the subnational level in Europe. Building on the notion of the deficit bias, we suspect that in the presence of fiscal rules, politicians have an incentive to...

This paper analyzes the impact of public investment on private investment in panel of 116 developing countries between 1980 and 2006 using dynamic panel data techniques, finding a strong and robust crowding-out effect that seems to be the norm rather than the exception, both across regions and...

This paper analyzes the impact of public investment on private investment in panel of 116 developing countries between 1980 and 2006 using dynamic panel data techniques, finding a strong and robust crowding-out effect that seems to be the norm rather than the exception, both across regions and...