Article about the problems of municipal governments related to fiscal consolidation in the Russian regions and the construction of the vertical of power during the first presidency of Vladimir Putin. The author analyzes the impact of the decline of the financial base of the city governments and...

An examination of how increased turnover among legislators in the fifty U.S. states affects fiscal policy and economic growth finds that it makes legislators short-sighted. Turnover increases the size of government by increasing the shares of both total spending and taxes in income. In...

This paper extends previous work presented at the SABE/IAREP conference at St Mary’s University, Halifax (James, 2009). In the earlier paper it was shown that conventional economic theory is used to make the case for tax reform but does not always adequately incorporate all the relevant...

The present study is, in particular, an attempt to test the relationship between tax level and political stability by using some economic control variables and to see the relationship among government effectiveness, corruption, and GDP. For the purpose, we used the Vector Autoregression (VAR)...

Cooperative federations are usually characterized by the existence of bailout guarantees and intergovernmental transfer schemes. This paper explores whether such features of cooperative federations lead to subnational soft budget constraints using panel data from the German States covering the...

I study whether bailouts of local governments carry electoral benefits for state governments with a dataset covering 421 municipalities in the German state of Hesse over the period 1999-2011. I find that past bailouts have no economically significant effect on the municipality-level vote share...

The paper’s aim is to link two different issues: equalization and fiscal competition. In the model there are two regions: the first one has rich citizens and the other one has poor citizens. Regional representatives in a federal Council must decide on the introduction of an equalization...

We develop a model with two provinces, producing two goods: one mobile and the other not. The mobile good is taxed according to the destination principle by the local government; it is also federally taxed. People decide to buy the good at the most advantageous price. Namely they can buy...

Federal transfers can depend on local fiscal capacity which is measured by local tax bases. The aim of this paper is to understand to what extent and how these transfers affect local tax decisions. We develop a model with two provinces producing one mobile good. The good is taxed according to...

The Province of Alberta has been a participant in the Tax Collection Agreements (TCAs) with the Federal Government covering the personal income tax since their inception in 1962. Under the terms of this agreement, the Federal Government undertakes to collect the Alberta personal income tax at no...