Fiscal decentralization is high on the agenda in policy fora. This paper empirically investigates the underlying causes of fiscal decentralization, based on the predictions of a simple political economy model. We argue that the likeliness that a central government engages in devolution of powers...

Depuis les travaux d’Aschauer (1989a), et Munnell (1990a), de nombreux travaux ont tenté d’établir et de mesurer la relation entre les dépenses publiques en infrastructures et la productivité des secteurs d’activité ou la croissance économique. Ce rapport fait d'abord une revue de...

Cet Article analyse l’endettement Public des provinces canadiennes, qui sont aux États subnationaux des Etats-Unis (États), de l’Australie (États), de l’Allemagne (länder) et de la Suisse (cantons), en plus des pays de l’OCDE. L’étude procède au classement des États Fédérés...

While electoral accountability should be stronger when responsibilities are clearly assigned to one political office, the involvement of higher tiers of government is often associated with policies specifically designed to improve local accountability. This paper investigates the impact of...

Decentralization of expenditure responsibilities from central to local governments is generally thought to increase overall government accountability by bringing the policymaking process closer to citizens. In practice, decentralization reforms tend to be partial in nature, leading to the...

Because they yield durable and visible benefits to voters, public infrastructure expenditures are an attractive instrument for politicians to build enduring electoral support in their constituencies. Static models of special-interest politics typically predict that public spending should be...

The economic literature has been investigating the positive relation between public infrastructure spending and the productivity of the private sector since Munnell (1992). We have introduced this relationship into a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Quebec economy to...