Delivering public goods and services requires identifying the needs of constituents and designing policies and programs to address these needs in the hopes of attaining development. These policy and program interventions should get the appropriate budgetary allocations to be implemented and...

The role of government in telecommunication infrastructure provision is important in developing countries as weak demand and high deployment cost exists, limit private initiative. As ICT infrastructure is substantial, some local government implemented a local broadband initiative to provide...

We analyze the decision of local governments to deploy social media. We argue that - by deploying social media - governments send a signal of modernity, transparency and openness for dialogue to their citizens. We apply a hazard model to panel data on municipalities in the German state of Hesse...

We estimate the causal effect of direct elections on the economic performance of politicians. Candidates running in direct elections to head local governments in the German state of Brandenburg need an absolute majority, and votes for the winner must represent at least 15% of eligible voters. If...

I examine decentralization through the lens of the local dynamics it unleashed in the much-noted case of Bolivia and the less-noted case of Bangladesh. I argue that the national effects of decentralization are largely the sum of its local-level effects. Hence to understand decentralization we...

We study management practices and performance of public sector organizations in Germany. For a representative sample of municipalities, we provide survey evidence for substantial heterogeneity in the use of structured management practices. This heterogeneity is not driven by differences across...

We study management practices and performance of public sector organizations in Germany. For a representative sample of municipalities, we provide survey evidence for substantial het-erogeneity in the use of structured management practices. This heterogeneity is not driven by differences across...