According to the European Regulatory Framework in Telecommunications sector, one of the main tasks required from the NRAs is to promote efficient investment and innovation in the field. The aim of this paper is to estimate the relevance of regulation for the growth of investment across 16 EU...

We measure the performance of public spending in Italian regions regarding the provision of public services, by constructing a so-called total regional performance indicator for strategic sectors such as general administration, energy, water and sewage, solid waste, and transports for 2001. This...

The current regulatory debate in the telecommunications industry in Europe and elsewhere is dominated by the issue of if and how to regulate next generation networks (NGN) which operators plan to roll out in the near future. The crucial issue is whether an extension of current regulatory...

We assess the performance of National Regulatory Authorities across 16 EU countries regarding economic regulation in telecommunications sector, by constructing a so-called Composite Regulatory Performance Indicator for regulatory aspects such as effectiveness of the national regulatory system,...

It is widely agreed that rules governing public procurement should be designed to achieve value for money. However, in the public works sector, ‘… the good being procured is usually complex and hard to be exactly specified <italic>ex ante</italic>, … [and] alterations to the original project might be...

Are countries characterized by more decentralized fiscal and spending powers less corrupt? Or is a higher degree of government fragmentation a more effective way to deter corruption? Is there any evidence that these alternative ways to enhance government accountability reinforce each other? This...

This paper extends the empirical literature about the effects of fiscal decentralization on the growth of government along three dimensions. It distinguishes between the effects of the level of decentralization from the way local governments finance their expenditures (common pool versus own...

This paper focuses on the issue of the electoral and ideological cycles in state government budget for the eleven Western German Lander. We verify this hypothesis over the period 1974-1994 for the following budgetary variables: total expenditures, surplus/deficit, administration, health care,...

We investigate whether corporatist governance negatively affects growth: a) directly through higher transaction costs involved in the policy decision making process; b) indirectly, yielding growth retarding policy decisions. We construct a more accurate data set for 18 OECD countries in the...