In this paper we study the relationship between legislature size and constituency size with respect to government spending. According to the theory, legislature size has an indefinite effect on government spending because logrolling and transaction costs may have cancelling effects. In turn,...

This paper empirically analyzes the demand for public goods in Italy over the period 1861-1913 in a political economy perspective and concentrates on fiscal illusion. The analysis suggests that the relationship between public expenditure and deficit is typically a long-run one. There is also a...

In this paper we analyse four determinants of turnout in petition referendums. We find that distributive referendums have higher turnout than efficiency referendums; the higher the percentage obtained by parties campaigning for abstention, the lower turnout. Furthermore, referendums held in June...

We analyse Ricardian Equivalence in open economy using a panel of 18 developed countries for 1973-1998. We use a dynamic panel estimated via instrumental variables and we discuss why this specification should be preferred to a static model estimated via ordinary least squares. We find a...