"This paper presents new evidence on the causal links between changes in the business environment and firm productivity growth. It contributes to the literature in three important aspects. First, it constructs a unique database merging information from two large firm-level databases. The samples...

"Its highly fragmented structure of local governments and serious horizontal fiscal imbalances make Switzerland a surprisingly powerful model for Eastern European countries that are currently facing the challenge of fiscal decentralization. In spite of the substantial differences in the...