This paper explored the yardstick competition among Japanese municipalities in providing medical subsidy for infants and children. In recent years, against the background of rapidly declining birthrate in Japan, municipalities aimed to reduce the medical burden of families with small children....

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...

The paper aims to emphasize the relative recent preoccupations of several European states and even of EU about reducing the administrative costs and contribution of this process to local and national development, increasing the GDP etc. Recent appreciations of the European officials reveal...

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...

The number of municipalities in Japan has decreased from 3,232 in 1999 to 1,820 in 2006 because of municipal mergers, called Heisei-no-Daigappei. This paper estimates the effects of municipal mergers in Japan’s local public expenditure. In order to evaluate the expenditure of municipal...

In this paper, the public burden for physical check-up of pregnant women is considered. This is a public expense that must be implemented by local governments independently. Public expenditure in this regard may be determined strategically by local governments to take into account the public...

According to the Lisbon Treaty the increasing cost of enforcing the European border against immigration shall be shared among the EU members. Nonetheless, the Treaty is rather vague with respect to the "appropriate measures" to adopt in order to distribute the financial burden. Members who do...

This article explores the effect of sub-national tax autonomy and sub-national control over shared taxes on primary deficits with panel data for 23 OECD countries over the 1975-2000 period. The results suggest that sub-national tax autonomy has a U-shaped effect on primary deficits. We find that...

This study explores the evolution of fiscal resource distribution in Pakistan. Pakistan is a federation comprising four provinces, federallyadministered areas, and the Islamabad Capital Territory. Being a central type of government, most of the revenues are collected by the centre and then...