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Do Oil Windfalls Improve Living Standards? Evidence from Brazil

Caselli, Francesco; Michaels, Guy - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2009

We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only modest effects on non-oil GDP...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008509470

Fiscal Federalism in Times of Crisis

Foremny, Dirk; von Hagen, Jürgen - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2012

We study the subnational fiscal adjustment to the Great Recession in a sample of European countries. We find that there are important differences between unitary and federal countries. Subnational governments in federal states reacted to the Great Recession by running larger budget deficits...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083379

Distributive Politics and the Costs of Centralization

Lockwood, Ben - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 1998

This paper integrates the distributive politics literature with the literature on decentralization by incorporating …. The efficiency of decentralization and the performance of 'constitutional rules' (such as majority voting) which may be … used to choose between decentralization and centralization are then discussed in this framework. Stronger externalities and …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005789145

On the Optimal Structure of Local Governments

Hochman, Oded; Pines, David; Thisse, Jacques-François - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 1994

We show that space matters in designing the optimal provision of local public goods (LPGs). Geography imposes particular institutional structure of local governments due to the overlapping of market areas associated with different LPGs. The optimum can be decentralized through local governments...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005656169

Moderating Political Extremism: Single Round vs Runoff Elections under Plurality Rule

Bordignon, Massimo; Nannicini, Tommaso; Tabellini, Guido - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2014

We compare single round vs runoff elections under plurality rule, allowing for partly endogenous party formation. Under runoff elections, the number of political candidates is larger, but the influence of extremist voters on equilibrium policy and hence policy volatility is smaller, because the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011145395

A General Test of Gaming

Courty, Pascal; Marschke, Gerald - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2004

An important lesson from the incentive literature is that explicit incentives may elicit dysfunctional and unintended responses, also known as gaming responses. The existence of these responses, however, is difficult to demonstrate in practice because this behaviour is typically hidden from the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005114434

Economic Reforms and Industrial Policy in a Panel of Chinese Cities

Alder, Simon; Shao, Lin; Zilibotti, Fabrizio - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2013

We estimate the effect on economic development of China's industrial policy, in particular, the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ). We use data from a panel of 276 Chinese cities and prefectures from 1988 to 2010. Our difference-in-difference estimator exploits the variation in the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011084232

Opportunistic Political Cycles: Test in a Young Democracy Setting

Akhmedov, Akhmed; Ravitchev, Alexei; Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2003

Despite the fact that theoretical research on opportunistic political cycles is very intuitive and well developed, empirical literature has found fairly weak evidence of opportunistic political cycles. This Paper tests the theory in a decade-old democracy – Russia. We find strong evidence of...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005662200

Curbing Cream-Skimming: Evidence on Enrolment Incentives

Courty, Pascal; Kim, Do Han; Marschke, Gerald - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2009

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...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005666832

How Elections Matter: Theory and Evidence from Environmental Policy

List, John; Sturm, Daniel M - C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers - 2004

In this Paper we explore to what extent secondary policy issues are influenced by electoral incentives. We develop a political agency model in which a politician decides on both a frontline policy issue, such as the level of public spending, and a secondary policy issue, such as environmental...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005789133