Allocation decisions are vulnerable to political influence, but it is unclear in which situations politicians use their discretionary power in a partisan manner. We analyze the allocation of presidential disaster declarations in the United States, exploiting the spatiotemporal randomness of...

The role climate change plays in increasing the burden on governments and insurers to pay for recovery is an area not examined by extreme event attribution research. To study these impacts, we examine the impacts of climate change attributed flooding on federal disaster aid disbursement in...

Hurricanes are among the costliest natural disasters in the world, with a significant portion of their impact linked to the accuracy of their forecasts. In this paper, we estimate the economic impacts of the official hurricane forecasts in the US and develop a new approach for measuring the...

We examine whether US and German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal transfers. Using panel data techniques we investigate whether the debt-to-GDP ratio had a positive influence on the primary surplus (Bohn-model). We show that including/excluding...

Fiscal sustainability tests have largely ignored the institutional setting of fiscal policy making. Fiscal equalization schemes in federal states are one such institution. We examine whether German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal equalization...

We evaluate the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. In 1999, the Italian central government introduced fiscal rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on municipal governments, and in 2001 the rules were relaxed for municipalities...

We explore how the vertical structure of direct democracy in a federal context affects expenditure decisions of sub-central governments. In so doing we revisit previous research on the effect of direct democratic institution on public policies. Particularly, the effect of upper-level (state)...

Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on intra-jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical impacts on the finances of other levels of governments have yet to be explored thoroughly. The paper investigates the influence of...

This paper, conducted as part of the research activities of SOSE S.p.A., develops a simple and innovative model to evaluate the performance of local government in the provision of local public services. The model employs a reduced set of information and fewer assumptions than traditional...