This paper provides an analytical characterization of Markov perfect equilibria in a politico-economic model with repeated voting, where agents vote over distortionary income redistribution. The key feature of the theory is that the future constituency of redistributive policies depends...

The classic theory of fiscal federalism suggests that different people should have different governments. Yet, separate local governments with homogeneous constituents often end up doing poorly. This paper explains why and answers three questions: when regions are heterogeneous, what determines...

The organisation of inpatient care provision has undergone significant reform in many southern European countries. Overall across Europe, public management is moving towards the introduction of more flexibility and autonomy . In this setting, the promotion of the further decentralisation of...

Recent policy developments in public health care systems lead to a greater diversity in health care. Decentralisation, either geographically or at an institutional level, is the key force, because it encourages innovation and local initiatives in health care provision. The devolution of...

We offer complete characterizations of the equilibrium outcomes of two prominent agenda voting institutions that are widely used in the democratic world: the amendment, also known as the Anglo-American procedure, and the successive, or equivalently the Euro-Latin procedure. Our axiomatic...

We estimate the effect of state judiciary presence on rent extraction in Brazilian local governments. We measure rents as irregularities related to waste or corruption uncovered by auditors. Our unique dataset at the level of individual inspections allows us to separately examine extensive and...

Do the contests with the largest prizes attract the most able contestants? To what extent do contestants avoid competition? In this paper, we show, theoretically and empirically, that the distribution of abilities plays a crucial role in determining contest choice. Sorting exists only when the...

Why do public-sector workers receive so much of their compensation in the form of pensions and other benefits? This paper presents a political economy model in which politicians compete for taxpayers' and government employees' votes by promising compensation packages, but some voters cannot...

Political party formation and coalition building in the European Parliament is being a driving force for making governance of the highly pluralistic European Union relatively effective and consensual. In spite of successive enlargements and the very high number of electoral parties obtaining...

Manipulation of government finances for the benefit of narrowly defined groups is usually thought to be limited to the part of the budget over which politicians exercise discretion in the short run, such as earmarks. Analyzing a revenue-sharing program between the central and local governments...