This paper analyzes whether the propensity to secede by subnational regions responds mostly to differences in income per capita or to distinct identities. We explore this question in a quantitative political economy model where people's willingness to finance a public good depends on their...

We examine the human development consequences of transferring responsibility for public service provision to local governments in India, using state-level variation in the timing of administrative decentralization reforms. We find that devolution of the responsibility for health functions from...

This paper investigates one of the most important financial issues arising from a secession or a country partitioning namely the sharing of the national public debt. Extending Dr?ze's distributive neutrality condition, we use the generational accounting technique and propose a dynamic...

This paper gives a short synoptical overview of the most important elements of current anti-immigration policy in Germany. Based on the hypothesis that its primary aim is exclusion of new migrants, the measures taken within the framework of a groupwise nationally oriented but internationally...

Public employment grew surprisingly fast in Russia during the 1990s, at a time when total employment was falling. Most of this growth occurred in the country?s 89 regions, and rates varied among them. This paper seeks to explain this variation. Using panel data for 78 regions over 1992-1998 we...

Governments do not have perfect information regarding the priorities and the needs of different groups in the economy. This lack of knowledge opens the door for different groups to lobby the government in order to receive the government?s support. We set up a model of hierarchical contests and...

Policy towards asylum seekers has been a controversial topic for more than a decade. Rising numbers of asylum applications have been met with ever-tougher policies to deter them. Following a period of policy harmonisation, the EU has reached a crucial stage in the development of a new Common...

We address the impact of corruption in a developing economy in the context of an empirically relevant hold-up problem - when a foreign firm sinks an investment to provide infrastructure services. We focus on the structure of the economy's bureaucracy, which can be centralized or decentralized,...

The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence...

Does fiscal decentralization in a politically decentralized less developed country help strengthen democratic institutions at the grass root level? And is the impact of such decentralization on local politics important in determining local development? Our study on Indonesia suggests that fiscal...