We identify exogenous variation in incumbent policymakers' re-election probabilities and explore empirically how this variation affects the incumbents' investment in physical capital. Our results indicate that a higher re-election probability leads to higher investments, particularly in the...

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...

The literature on estimating macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy requires suitable instruments to identify exogenous and unanticipated spending shocks. So far, the instrument of choice has been military build-ups. This instrument, however, largely limits the analysis to the US as few other...

Participatory Democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both Direct and Representative Democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The aim of this paper is to understand how Participatory...

Using data from a large, U.S. federal job training program, we investigate whether enrolment incentives that exogenously vary the ‘shadow prices’ for serving different demographic subgroups of clients influence case workers’ intake decisions. We show that case workers enroll more clients...

Rapide decentralizatioon since 1992 has given substantial responsability for key government services not just to Russias' 88 regions (oblasts) but also to its 1800 local authorities (raisons). It seems likely that that this will have had consequences for the enquiry of provision of these...

This paper revisits the fiscal "decentralization theorem", by relaxing the role of the assumption that governments are benevolent, while retaining the assumption of policy uniformity. If instead, decisions are made by direct majority voting, (i) centralization can welfare-dominate...

Empirical tests of the theories on the relationship between political competition and economic performance generate a puzzle: data tend to support the theory at the lower levels of government, but not in panels of countries. We argue that the larger set of policy instruments reduces the tax...

We set up a model to characterize the reaction functions of governments competing for mobile capital by simultaneously setting both the business tax rate as well as the level of provision of a productive public input. Using a rich data set of local jurisdictions, we then test the predictions of...

Using a new data set on Swiss state and local governments from 1890 to today, we analyze how the adoption of proportional representation affects fiscal policy. We show that proportional systems shift spending toward broad goods (e.g. education and welfare benefits) but decrease spending on...