We show that voters are fiscal conservatives, although in the long run only: while the average (over the mandate) level of debt has a negative impact on the probability of reelection, pre-election debt accumulation by incumbents increases their probability of reelection. As the negative impact...

This paper examines the political economy of emerging infectious disease (EID) surveillance programs. It provides lessons learned for U.S. military medical research laboratories collaborating with developing countries and is comprised of four case studies: Kenya (U.S. Army Medical Research...

The aim of the paper is to understand how the structure of government-business relations influences the quality of institutions and economic development in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The paper identifies the key elements of the business community engaged in negotiations with the state, explores...

This paper presents an index of institutionalized social technologies covering its two main dimensions namely Risk reducing technologies and Anti Rent seeking technologies and in turn covers several social, institutional, political and economic aspects. Specifically it attempted to classify and...

Using a unique set of electoral rules present in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, we explore the question whether local electoral rules affect the size of local governments. We find evidence that party--list system is associated with higher levels of expenditure and that direct elections of the...

We analyze the effects of political business cycles and fiscal autonomy on the expenditure categories of Polish municipalities. Using System GMM technique, we find convincing evidence for strong political business cycles in almost all expenditure categories, and in particular for the categories...

In the last decade, Italy has experienced a considerable decentralization of functions to the regions. This transformation has been especially relevant for the National Health System that has de facto assumed a federal system design. The federal reform aimed at disciplining public health...

The empirical literature shows that incumbent politicians move expenditure from one budget item to another before elections and under different electoral systems in order to capture voter consensus and gain re-election. However, little attention has been paid to measurement of the degree of...

In order to evaluate a fiscal common-pool problem, this paper focuses on the relationship between local government council size and its expenditure. Generally, local councilors internalize the benefit of public projects targeted at their political jurisdictions, but underestimate and prefer to...

This study adopts state-level data to empirically investigate the Tiebout hypothesis (as extended by Tullock) of “voting with one’s feet” for the period referred to in the U.S. as the “Great Recession” (2007-2009). As compared to previous studies, we use more recent data and provide...