This paper employs tests for Granger-Sims causality and a four-variable vector-autoregression (VAR) to examine whether real government spending and real net taxes have any systematic effect on output purchased by the private sector. The paper finds no evidence of causality from government...

Does the Chilean government smooth taxes? This paper argues that the answer is yes, but only if one takes into account royalties from copper. During the past ten years there has been a serious debate in Chile initially regarding the sustainability of the Chilean government's fiscal deficit and...

I develop models in which a minimum winning coalition decides on the level of government spending, where the Coase theorem holds amongst members of the winning coalition. An increase in the supermajority requirement has potentially conflicting effects on spending. A higher requirement increases...

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president's party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by...