Previous literature generally finds that greater fiscal decentralization is associated with faster economic growth, improved government performance and stronger constraints on the Leviathan behaviour of governments. Because economic growth critically depends on the presence of good government...

After the US Supreme Court overturned the Affordable Care Act's mandate that states expand Medicaid, roughly half the states have declined to expand. Declining states blame the high state budgetary cost. While these states do have significantly higher expansion costs, they are also significantly...

We find that presidential and congressional influences affect the rate of disaster declaration and the allocation of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) disaster expenditures across states. States politically important to the president have a higher rate of disaster declaration by the...

Because entrepreneurial activity is a key source of economic growth, promoting youth entrepreneurship has become a priority for policymakers. School choice programs force administrators and teachers to be more entrepreneurial in their jobs by encouraging innovation and by creating competition...

No Abstract

No Abstract

"This paper explores the widely accepted view that Wal-Mart causes significant harm to the traditional, small "mom and pop" business sector of the U.S. economy. We present the first rigorous econometric investigation of this issue by examining the rate of self-employment and the number of small...

A country’s political and economic institutions are critical for economic prosperity. The literature abounds with institutional measures, precisely because institutions are multidimensional. We use panel unit root and cointegration tests to examine the time-series properties of several...