The goal of this paper is twofold: First, to develop an estimable model of legislative politics in the US Congress, second, to provide a greater understanding of the objectives behind the New Deal. In the theoretical model, the distribution of federal funds across regions of the country is the...

We evaluate the effects of structural tax reforms on government spending efficiency in a sample of OECD economies over the period 2007-2016. After calculating input spending efficiency scores, we assess the relevance for efficiency of narrative tax changes in a panel setup. We find that: i)...

An essential dilemma in economics that has yielded ambiguous answers is whether governments should spend more in recessions. This paper provides an extension of the work of Ramey & Zubairy (2018) for the US economy according to which the government spending multipliers are below unity,...

We present new evidence about a mechanism -- the broadening of the tax base -- through which governments increase state capacity. Our difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits the staggered introduction of the income tax across twentieth-century US states. We find that tax...

We discuss and provide an overview of the size and role of the government, notably in terms of what the government "should" do, how the government could spend and intervene in the economy, how much governments spend and what they spend their money on. This is done from a historical perspective...

Some politicians argue for the splitting and combining of states to increase government productivity, but there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the optimal size of a state. Using data from Indian states, I test a model of the optimal size of the state. I find that size and preference...

In Nigeria, the government activities vis-à-vis public expenditure has grown rapidly both in absolute, relative and as a share of GDP over the years. These growths in government expenditure have been due to certain factors which are believed to have significant effect on the fiscal operation of...

This research examines regional government performance in Indonesia's provinces after the implementation of fiscal decentralization in 2001 using a two-stage approach. First, extensive input and output data are utilized to measure government productivity and efficiency indices using a Malmquist...

This paper reviews the key issues concerning the impact of public spending and taxation on long-run growth and inequality and takes stock of existing theoretical and empirical studies. Overall, the evidence highlights that the size of the government matters for long-term growth as a too large...