This article examines effectiveness of sub-national borrowing control regimes in maintaining overall fiscal sustainability. The results suggest that regulating sub-national borrowing based on fiscal rules performs most efficiently in maintaining fiscal consolidation. Furthermore, sole reliance...

We investigate the political determinants of risk premiums which sub-national governments in Switzerland have to pay for their sovereign bond emissions. For this purpose we analyse financial market data from 288 tradable cantonal bonds in the period from 1981 to 2007. Our main focus is on two...

The main objective of this research consists on analyzing regional public sector enterprises (PSEs) in Spain. We describe a general view on Spanish Autonomous Communities (ACs) financial resources, in the context of the Stability and Growth Pact and Budgetary Stability Act. From 2002, such...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

Tax auditing parameters have been largely overlooked by the literature as policy-making instruments of any relevance; however, enforcement strategies are critical elements of the tax burden. In this paper we show that, in a federal framework, tax auditing policies can serve as additional tools for...

This paper studies fiscal federalism when voter information varies across regions. We develop a model of political agency with heterogeneously informed voters. Rent-seeking politicians provide public goods to win the votes of the informed. As a result, rent extraction is lower in regions with...

We analyse the impact of regulation, industrial policy and jurisdictional allocation on broadband deployment using a theoretical model and an empirical estimation. Although central powers may be more focused and internalize interjurisdictional externalities, decentralized powers may internalize...

We use data for all Italian municipalities, from 2001-2006, to empirically test the extent to which two electoral rules, which hold, for small and large municipalities, affect fiscal policy decisions. Municipalities with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants elect their mayors in accordance with a...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of revenue decentralization on the provision of infrastructure at the sub-national level. We estimate the effects of revenue decentralization and earmarked grant financing on the level of sub-national infrastructure investment in 20 European...

We develop a political economy model of intergovernmental transfers. Vertical fiscal balance occurs in a federation when the ratio of the marginal benefit of the public services provided by the federal and provincial governments is equal to their relative marginal costs of production. With...