The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9...

We utilize county-level data to explore growth determination in the U.S. and possible heterogeneity in growth determination across individual states. The data includes over 3,000 cross-sectional observations and 39 demographic control variables. We use a consistent two stage least squares...

Exploiting spatial and temporal variations in the number of seizures from criminal organizations, I estimate regional fixed effects models of the increase in the number of properties confiscated on the main crime rates. From 2002 security strategies changed, and as a result, the effects on crime...

Globalization has a concrete territorial expression, with remaining regional asymmetries. Writers in growth and development are far away to achieve consensus about the underpinning reasons of heterogeneity in regional performance. This constitutes an important regional policy issue. This paper...

Most opportunistic-type models of political business cycles tend to posit a given objective for incumbents: maximisation of re-election chances. Though taking an opportunistic view too, we suggest a new explanation for a fiscal policy cycle: the incumbent’s concern with her own welfare in...

We use recently developed times series techniques to analyse long historical data on the budget of the Court of Nivelles (Belgium) in the late Middle Ages. The unidirectional causality from receipts to expenditures supports the idea that the medieval system under consideration is a fine-focused...

Bien qu'il est généralement admis en économie publique que le fossé qui sépare l'approche positive des choix publics et leur approche normative implique l'existence de possibles pareto améliorations dans les choix en matière de dépense publique, il semble que l'économiste manque...

Recent empirical evidence, from countries in the European Union in particular, are much more ambiguous on the costs savings from private production of local public services than previous literature used to be. In this paper, an explanatory model of factors driving costs in solid waste collection...

Does there exist a connection between the political power and the tax administration? In this paper, we offer empirical evidence from Spain that there exists. First, the Spanish regional tax administration is not immune to the budgetary situation of the regional government, and tends to exert a...