We study the effects of electoral institutions on the size and composition of public expenditure in OECD and Latin American countries. We emphasize the distinction between purchases of goods and services, which are easier to target geographically, and transfers, which are easier to target across...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a ‘fiscal deficit bias’ and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this bias....

Do fiscal rules likely lead to fiscal adjustment, or do they encourage the use of ‘creative accounting’? This question is studied with a model in which fiscal rules are imposed on ‘measured’ fiscal variables, which can differ from ‘true’ variables because there is a margin for...

This paper studies the effects of factor income taxation and of subsidies to human capital accumulation in models of endogenous growth. It examines in particular how these effects depend on the specification of the leisure activity and on the technology and tax treatment of the sector producing...

The effects of income and consumption taxation are examined in the context of models in which the growth process is driven by the accumulation of human and physical capital. The different channels through which these taxes affect economic growth are discussed. It is shown that the effects of...