Economic literature on organizations (Milgrom, 1998; Milgrom and Roberts 1992, 2009) points out that when distributive policies are discretionary realized within firms by managers, the agents working in the organization will undertake "influence activities" with possible negative effects on firm's...

In a decentralized setting, are policy targets imposed by the central government on local elected officials effective? And when? We address these questions in Italy, where the central government has set a target for childcare coverage at the municipal level for Southern regions since 2007. We...