This note proposes a research agenda for studying the implications of enhanced capital mobility and limited de facto exchange rate flexibility for the conduct of macroeconomic stabilization. The ineffectiveness of monetary policy under such conditions suggests a greater role for fiscal policy as...

This note proposes a research agenda for studying the implications of enhanced capital mobility and limited de facto exchange rate flexibility for the conduct of macroeconomic stabilization. The ineffectiveness of monetary policy under such conditions suggests a greater role for fiscal policy as...

This paper presents an analysis on capital accumulation and social welfare in fiscal federalism and the unitary system by using an overlapping generations model. We introduce three possible cases pertaining to how government tax policy towards individuals could be formulated: the government...

This note examines the distribution of government quality across 125 countries over the period 1984-2008. To this end, a non-parametric methodology is used to study the dynamics of the entire distribution. The results show the presence of a convergence process in governance outcomes across the...

This note extends the work of Borcherding, Ferris and Garzoni (2003) on government size by considering how traditional tests respond to alternative definitions of government size. An error correction format is used to show that a) qualitatively all measures of size perform well, b) government...

An autocrat who is politically insecure may not invest in income-enhancing goods like education, roads, the rule of law, etc. The novelty of this paper is to argue that ethnic diversity and discrimination exacerbate an autocrat's fear of the negative effect of high income or income-enhancing...

While many economists have theorized and/or empirically demonstrated that labor-leisure decisions are influenced by the rate of taxation, this note introduces a new mechanism in which the collecting of taxes on income may affect such decisions. Although standard models assume that agents have no...

The purpose of this note is to correct an error in the seminal article on secession by Buchanan and Faith (1987). In their paper, Buchanan and Faith neglected the effect of political separation affects on markets, and consequently on individual private incomes.

This paper examines the mechanics of intertemporal information provision in dynastic governments.

Starting from the median voter model commonly used in the literature to analyse the determinants of the functional distribution of public spending, we propose a new multiproduct dynamic model that also allows one to classify the nature of the interaction –complementarity or substitutability–...