<title>Abstract</title> Quality of governance is a key for political accountability, hence, the importance of identifying its determinants. Here, we focus on one dimension of quality of governance: fiscal transparency. Drawing on a sample of 691 Catalan municipalities (2001--7), we estimate the factors...

The introduction of a mix of tax shares has been the main reform of the Spanish regional financing system,in effect since January 2002.The aim of this pa- per is obtaining,given a basic expenditure needs,its optimal composition for each re- gional government (so-called «Comunidad Autónoma de...

US cigarette excise tax rates are state interdependent. In contrast, we cannot reject the absence of interdependence for gasoline taxation, which shows a very high degree of inertia. A one-cent increase in the neighbors’ cigarette tax rate implies a contemporaneous cigarette tax increase of...

Besley and Rosen (1998) were the first researchers to test empirically for the presence of vertical tax externalities, examining the case of unit taxes on gasoline and tobacco. However, they did not take into account the price differences across states that arise because high cost areas pay less...

Trust in the justice administration conditions the sustainability of the very rule of law, and can even promote interpersonal trust and, hence, social capital. Inferring its determinants, which is what I seek to do for the Spanish case, is therefore of paramount importance. I find that the level...

Tax auditing parameters have been largely overlooked by the literature as policy-making instruments of any relevance; however, enforcement strategies are critical elements of the tax burden. In this paper we show that, in a federal framework, tax auditing policies can serve as additional tools for...

Depending on their degree of risk aversion, team managers might prefer those players who score a regular amount of points in each game of the season to those other players who, although on average do equally well or even better, are more inconsistent. However, sports statistics do not reflect...

The design of a tax system is a daunting task. Economies have become increasingly complex, which makes the design of taxes has to take into account behavioral taxpayers' responses - including mobility -, but also tax planning issues. Additionally, increasing inequality trends put more pressure...