I show that the weather condition on election day affects future fiscal policy. When it rains during state elections, there is an increase in the relative income of voters, which is followed by an increase in expenditure and debt. The increase in expenditure is directed towards a larger police...

Education in Denmark is freely available. Despite near equal teacher salaries and per-pupil school expenditure across districts, there is substantial spatial heterogeneity in school quality as measured by teacher quality and student test scores. We argue that this is due to sorting of teachers...

This paper sets out a framework for estimating household preferences over a broad range of housing and neighborhood characteristics, some of which are determined by the way that households sort in the housing market. This framework brings together the treatment of heterogeneity and selection...

We provide empirical evidence that female mayors do not affect the expenditure allocation or size of local governments. This result is robust across a variety of regression discontinuity and standard multivariate estimations. We also examine whether elected female candidates have an increased...

We investigate the influence of public policy on interprovincial migration in Canada using new aggregated migration data for 1974-1996, the longest period studied so far. We consider the consequences of regional variation in a variety of policies, and also investigate the effects of certain...

We provide an analysis of the housing market and current housing policies in three developed countries: the United Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, and the United States (US). We focus on these three countries mainly due to the marked differences in their institutional settings. The UK is...

The empirical evidence on the relationship between political decentralization and corruption is far from clear. We develope a model that analizes the relationship between decentralization and corruption and show how cost-benefit calculations can lead public administrations to tolerate a certain...

We analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on U.S. county population, employment, and real income growth. Our findings suggest that government organization matters for local economic growth, but that the impacts vary by government unit and by economic indicator. We find that single-purpose...

Most growth theorists agree that understanding the economics of innovation and technological change is central to understanding why some countries are richer and/or grow faster than other countries. The driving force behind recent developments in endogenous innovation models of growth is a...

Until the early 1990s, the discussions on fiscal policy primarily centered on the functions of economic stabilization, income redistribution and resource allocation. Long-term growth was not usually viewed as an end itself, and fiscal policy was often not sufficiently tailored to the different...