Previous studies on electoral competition show that fiscal variables are manipulated by incumbent politicians in order to be re-elected. This phenomenon has been addressed by the literature on electoral budget cycle and, in a decentralised economy, by the literature on yardstick competition. Our...

We evaluate the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. In 1999, the Italian central government introduced fiscal rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on municipal governments, and in 2001 the rules were relaxed for municipalities...

We evaluate the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. In 1999, the Italian central government introduced fiscal rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on municipal governments, and in 2001 the rules were relaxed for municipalities...

In this paper, we test one of the fundamental assumptions in the tax competition literature, namely, that a country's taxable income depends on the tax policies pursued in the domestic and in neighbouring countries. Based on a panel of annual data of 14 Western European countries spanning the...

Theoretical models of strategic interaction among local governments are often empirically implemented by the use of spatial econometric techniques. This paper deals with the de…nition of the elements in the spatial weights matrix W in empirical models of strategic interaction among local...

Strategic interaction in local tax setting is motivated with yardstick competition only when the fiscal decision influences the incumbents’ probability of being re-elected. Most of the previous analyses draw conclusions on yardstick competition without estimating this link or failing to find...

This paper tests the consistency between the responsibility and the yardstick competition hypotheses. If no evidence is found that voters reelect mayors comparing their performance with those of neighboring jurisdictions, strategic interactions among municipalities cannot be properly interpreted...

Many motivations exist that cause legislators to behave strategically when voting. However, it is difficult to uncover the magnitude of the interaction among politicians. This paper takes a “spatial” approach to the problem, using a spatial autoregressive model where the elements of the...

This paper aims to test the existence of vertical interactions in terms of public spending between overlapping local jurisdictions in France using a data set of 110 French municipalities and their corresponding departments in 2001 and 2005. To do so, we consider that demand for municipal...

This paper seeks for public spending interdependence among jurisdictions within some Italian local councils. We find significant positive interaction among spending of neighboring local councils both at the level of total expenditure and also for different subcategories. However, this result...