We study the effect of ethnic diversity on local public spending following fiscal decentralisation in a setting where local institutions are salient. Specifically, the latter affects coordination costs and thereby cooperative behaviour across the constituent ethnic groups. Our theory highlights...

This paper overviews theoretical and empirical contributions that study political borders from an economic perspective. It reviews theories of the number and size of nations focused on the trade-off between economies of scale in public-good provision and heterogeneity of preferences over public...

We investigate how changes in the administrative-territorial structure affect ethnic voting. We present an event study design that exploits the 2010 constitutional reform in Kenya, which substantially increased the number of primary administrative regions. We find (i) strong evidence for a...