The literature on the economics of fiscal decentralization stresses the potential for both positive and negative effects on the quality of governance in a country. The empirical evidence on the issue is scant. In this paper, we add to the empirical evidence by testing for a relationship between...

We use a bivariate probit model with sample selection to investigate the factors affecting financial exclusion of Bolivian households. We find evidence that for heads of households, being female and indigenous is likely to result in exclusion from formal credit mechanisms, though being employed...

A growing economics literature argues that taxation can strengthen the quality of governance and public sector institutions by making governments more responsive and accountable to their citizens, building capacity, and improving public policy. In this paper, we provide empirical support for...

We investigate the effect of relatively loose monetary policy on bank risk through a large panel including quarterly information from listed banks operating in the European Union and the United States. We find evidence that relatively low levels of interest rates over an extended period of time...

We find that the increased use of securitization activity in the banking sector augmented the effect of competition on realized bank risk during the 2007-2009 crisis. Our results suggest that securitization by itself does not lead to augmented risk while higher levels of capital do not buffer...

We exploit the 2007-2009 financial crisis to analyze how risk relates to bank business models. Institutions with higher risk exposure had less capital, larger size, greater reliance on short-term market funding, and aggressive credit growth. Business models related to significantly reduced bank...

One of the difficulties of measuring performance in the deliver y of police services from surveys is the problem of reconciling views about the quality of policing of distinct groups of respondents with different prior outlook about policing. This paper suggests a method for addressing the...

Bank securitisation is deemed to have been a major contributing factor to the 2007/08 financial crises via fuelling credit growth accompanied by lower banksÕ credit standards. Yet, prior to the crisis a common view was that securitisation activity makes the financial system more stable as risk...

We compare the characteristics of 77 convicted home-grown Islamic terrorists in the UK to a representative sample of 858 UK Muslims. UK Muslims are more likely to be convicted of terrorism if they are better educated and young, which accords with findings from recent research on the behaviour of...

We examine the intertemporal relation between government revenue and expenditure in the UK during 1750–2004. We pay particular attention to long-run trends by applying a battery of unit root and cointegration techniques to the data, and we use a modified Granger-causality test on data spans...