The paper compares decision-making on the centralisation of public goods provision in the presence of regional externalities under representative and direct democratic institutions. A model with two regions, two public goods and regional spillovers is developed in which uncertainty over the true...

This paper analyses the importance of fiscal mechanisms for regional risk sharing and redistribution in Switzerland. Switzerland is a particularly interesting setting in this context because it features both a high level of fiscal autonomy for Swiss cantons and explicit fiscal transfers between...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the com-petitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...

This paper analyses the importance of fiscal mechanisms for regional risk sharing and redistribution in Switzerland. Switzerland is a particularly interesting setting in this context because it features both a high level of fiscal autonomy for Swiss cantons and explicit fiscal transfers between...

This paper analyses the importance of fiscal mechanisms for regional risk sharing and redistribution in Switzerland. Switzerland is a particularly interesting setting in this context because it features both a high level of fiscal autonomy for Swiss cantons and explicit fiscal transfers between...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the com-petitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...

Nach Ansicht von Ludger Schuknecht, ehem. OECD und Bundesministerium der Finanzen, sollte mit dem absehbaren Ende der Covid-19-Krise die Schuldenbremse wieder angewendet werden. Sie garantiere, dass Deutschland seinen zukünftigen Herausforderungen gewachsen ist. Zudem sei sie pro-europäisch,...

This paper investigates spatial spillovers in local spending decisions by using panel data of the Swiss communes in the canton of Lucerne during the 1990s. Due to the geographical fragmentation with a major central city and some 100 suburban communes within a distance from 4 to 55 kilometers to...

This paper investigates spatial spillovers in local spending decisions between the center and the surrounding local communities by using panel data of the canton of Lucerne during the 1990s. Due to the geographical fragmentation with a major central city and some 100 small suburban local...

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the relationship between government size and economic growth. But the empirical evidence of growth effects of public expenditure using cross-country regressions is still inconclusive. According to a number of authors this is not surprising since...