The need to increase the level of resources channelled to fundamental research and higher education is broadly acknowledged. These two activities have all of the characteristics of collective or public goods: they thus need to be primarily funded with public money. Traditional economic theory...

A new institutional reform is one of the major stakes for the Belgian citizens and enterprises ahead of the regional election of June 2009. Since the general federal election of June 2007 Belgium has been facing new tensions between the two main Communities. On one side, the Flemish Community...

During the last decade several Flemish political parties have required the devolution of health insurance. This article analyses the points of view expressed by several actors (health insurance managers, doctors and hospital managers) interviewed by the Flemish Parliamentary Commission for...

From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the fiscal vertical imbalance (i.e. the dependence of sub-national governments on national government revenues to support their expenditures) is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to...