Persson and Tabellini (2003) show that presidential regimes and majoritarian election systems have important effects on fiscal policy, government effectiveness and productivity. Here, their dataset is extended in a number of ways: the number of countries included is increased from 85 to up to...

This is the first study that assesses the economic effects of direct democratic institutions on a cross country basis. Its results are based on up to six new measures produced to reflect the legislative basis for using direct democratic institutions as well as their factual use. In addition, a...

This paper explores the idea that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by employing a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a principal component analysis, seven aspects of both federalism and...

This is the first study that assesses the economic effects of direct democratic institutions on a cross country basis. Its results are based on up to six new measures produced to reflect the legislative basis for using direct democratic institutions as well as their factual use. In addition, a...

This study contains further evidence on the economic effects of direct democratic institutions. A first study found that countries with national initiatives have higher government expenditure and are characterized by more rent-seeking activity, that the effects of direct democratic institutions...

There is a well-established literature analyzing the effects of fiscal institutions on fiscal policy variables such as budget deficits or accumulated government debt. We combine this literature with the emerging field of positive constitutional economics, which deals with the economic effects of...

This is the first study that assesses the economic effects of differences in organizational design of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) on a cross-country basis. The effects on three groups of economic variables are estimated, namely on (1) fiscal policy, on (2) government effectiveness and...