Germany's fiscal federalism has undergone a process of perpetual reform. On the one hand, some tax sources that have existed up to now – the corporate income tax is a good example in this context – will shortly be phased out because of changes in the system. On the other hand the...

Why people pay their taxes voluntarily is a key puzzle in the public finance literature. Some suggest that factors such as the level of tax morale, defined as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, affects compliance behaviour. While there have been numerous studies that have explored tax...

This paper analyses the impact of direct democracy and local autonomy on tax morale and the size of the shadow economy. We use two different data sets on tax morale at the individual level (World Values Survey and International Social Survey Programme) and the macro data of the size of the...

This paper studies the evolution of tax morale in Spain in the post-Franco era. In contrast to the previous tax compliance literature, the current paper investigates tax morale as the dependent variable and attempts to answer what actually shapes tax morale. The analysis uses survey data from...

The literature on social capital has strongly increased in the last two decades, but there still is a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of international trust. This empirical study analyses a cross-section of individuals, using micro-data from the World Values Survey,...

What makes governments tick? Why are some public institutions more successful than others in managing resources and delivering services? And even more vitally, how can malfunctioning institutions be reformed so that they perform their responsibilities more effectively? This paper contributes to...

The following paper examines the different options to finance local public infrastructure in Ethiopia based on the assumption that the federal government of Ethiopia will not provide any guarantees for local borrowing. Besides a detailed description of the local public finance system and the...

Intergovernmental finance is a significant source of sub-national finance in most countries. In both industrial and developing countries, formula based "manna from heaven" general purpose transfers dominate but co-exist with highly intrusive micro-managed "command and control" specific purpose...

Governance indicators are now widely used as tools for conducting development dialogue, allocating external assistance, and influencing foreign direct investment. This paper argues that available governance indicators are not suitable for these purposes as they do not conceptualize governance...