The common-pool problem is a central issue in the relationship between the political structure of jurisdictions and the size of public spending. Models predict that, other things being equal, greater political districting of a jurisdiction raises the scale of government. This paper presents new...

Recent work on the political economy of fiscal policy has asked how budgetary institutions affect fiscal outcomes. But what determines the budgetary institutions? In this paper I consider one such institution: the executive veto. A simple theoretical framework predicts that jurisdictions with...

This paper presents evidence on the political and economic determinants of social sector spending from a panel dataset. The principal finding is that democratization in countries, as measured by within-country variation in subjective indices of democracy, is a significant predictor of government...

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...