This paper provides a simple political agency model to explain the effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on intergovernmental grants and election outcomes. Key features of the model are: (i) rational voters interpret public good provision as a signal of incumbent...

This paper provides a simple political agency model to explain the effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on intergovernmental grants and election outcomes. Key features of the model are: (i) rational voters interpret public good provision as a signal of incumbent...

In the literature on fiscal federalism, vertical fiscal imbalances have been widely studied, while the theme of horizontal fiscal imbalances and inequality between local governments' fiscal capacities is still less explored. This paper contributes to fill the gap. A new method to compute fiscal...

The paper provides an analysis of the determinants of health spending differentials among the Italian Regions for the years 1998-2010. An original standardised spending framework is proposed that takes into account the appropriateness of the services provided and price/technical efficiency, as...