Federalism can be a conflict-prevention mechanism, but some political scientists and economists have also endorsed certain features of the system as being likely to establish proper market incentives for economic growth. Most developing countries have ignored economists' recommendations for...

In this essay, I argue that the various institutional settings of fiscal decentralization observed in developing countries are contingent on institutional quality. Other incentives may exist for policymakers to change the degrees of fiscal power. My research is based on a five-year average of...

Considerable attention has been given to enhancing subnational development finance in response to the 2008 global financial crisis and recent global development agendas, including the Sustainable Development Goals, Financing for Development, and Habitat III/New Urban Agenda. Much work on this...

What is the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth? This is probably one of the most famous questions in the foreign aid – economic growth debate. Whether this question has been sufficiently answered remains to be known. Developing nations have been and continue to be known to...

We reconsider the macroeconomic implications of public investment efficiency, defined as the ratio between the actual increment to public capital and the amount spent. We show that, in a simple and standard model, increases in public investment spending in inefficient countries do not have a...

After being sued for inequity and inadequacy in school funding, many states have reformed their education aid policies. Using Connecticut as an example, this paper shows how to design a state education aid formula that can effectively address funding inequity and inadequacy while taking...

This paper examines the distribution of unrestricted municipal aid in Massachusetts, which has been a major concern to civic leaders and elected officials of many communities, including Springfield. The paper develops a measure of the municipal fiscal gap indicating the relative need of...

This paper develops a framework that distributes reductions in state aid based on underlying local fiscal health. Under this framework, the state gives smaller aid cuts to communities that are in worse underlying fiscal health and receive less existing aid. This framework therefore provides a...

Considerable attention has been given to enhancing subnational development finance in response to the 2008 global financial crisis and recent global development agendas, including the Sustainable Development Goals, Financing for Development, and Habitat III/New Urban Agenda. Much work on this...

I exploit unusual policy variation in Indonesia to examine how local responses to intergovernmental grants depend on their persistence. A national reform produced permanent increases in the general grant that were larger for less densely populated districts. Hydrocarbon-rich districts...