Evidence on schools' performance is confined to comparisons across schools, usually based on value-added measures. We adopt an alternative approach comparing schools to observationally equivalent workplaces in the rest of the British economy using measures of workplace performance that are...

This paper evaluates the effects of changes in the supply of news provided by newspapers on electoral participation, political selection, and government efficiency. We address these issues in the Italian context by constructing a new dataset covering the presence of local news by different types...

Supervisors occupy central roles in production and performance monitoring. We study how heterogeneity in performance evaluations across supervisors affects employee and supervisor careers and firm outcomes using data on the performance system of a Scandinavian service sector firm. We show that...

Do empires affect attitudes towards the state long after their demise? We hypothesize that the Habsburg Empire with its localized and well-respected administration increased citizens' trust in local public services. In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the...

The effectiveness of public funds in increasing public employment has long been a question on public and labor economists' minds. In most federal countries local governments employ large fractions of the working population, meaning that a tool for stimulating local public employment can...

Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Surveys, this paper studies the impact of fiscal decentralisation in Indonesia on local public spending across communities with different types of local institutions. Our results provide evidence of heterogeneity in access to public goods across...

This paper examines if money matters in education by looking at whether missing resources due to corruption affect student outcomes. We use data from the auditing of Brazil's local governments to construct objective measures of corruption involving educational block grants transferred from the...

This paper analyzes the determinants of local institutions and distribution of political power within a constant 'macro-institutional' setting. We show that characteristics of Brazilian municipalities related to institutional quality and distribution of political power are partly inherited from...

Political corruption is a concern of many modern democracies. It weakens democratic institutions, restricts public services, and lowers productivity undermining economic development. Yet despite its importance, our understanding of what determines corruption is limited. This paper uses a novel...