Showing 1 - 10 of 81
This paper adds to the literature by utilizing improved data on tax revenue decentralization to re-examine the relationship between fiscal decentralization and the size of government. An econometric analysis using panel data from 18 OECD countries shows that fiscal decentralization matters for...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012783397
We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. The problem is first posed in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data for 130 years) and by taking up the challenge to make...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012781541
We investigate empirically the effect of government purchases on unemployment in 20 OECD countries, for the period 1960-2007. Compared to earlier studies we use a data set with more variation in unemployment, and which allows for controlling for a host of factors that influence the effect of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013124098
This paper analyzes government commitments to ongoing spending programs that require future outlays. Spending commitments are important for understanding partisan politics because they constrain future governments. In a model with one government good, a “stubborn liberal” policy maker can...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013124681
This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on profits using panel data for 19 high-income OECD countries during the period 1975-1999. We estimate a profit equation in which profits depend on a set of fiscal variables. Our empirical method is based on a consistent treatment of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013154254
According to the disciplining hypothesis, globalization restrains governments by inducing increased budgetary pressure. As a consequence, governments shift their expenditures in favour of transfers and subsidies and away from capital expenditures. This expenditure shift is potentially enhanced...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012779699
Government is often considered the safe sector of an open economy that provides households with insurance against external risk exposure. Among highly integrated economies, however, households should be able to exploit common financial markets to insure themselves. In this paper we examine the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013011795
This paper studies the impact of national fiscal rules on government size as measured by the ratio of government expenditures to gross domestic product. We develop a model of the budgetary process and show that a common pool problem may arise which can be mitigated through fiscal rules. We test...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013315620
We investigate empirically how party ideology influences size and scope of government as measured by the size of government, tax structure and labor market regulation. Our dataset comprises 49 US states over the 1993-2009 period. We employ the new data on the ideological mapping of US...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013315778
How does ideological polarization on non-economic matters influence the size of government? We analyze this question using a differentiated candidates framework: Two office-motivated candidates differ in their (fixed) ideological position and their production function for public goods, and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013315995