A 1999 reform allowed Italian Mayors to partially substitute a more accountable source of tax revenue (the property tax) with a less transparent one (a surcharge on the personal income tax). Theoretical analysis suggests this should give incompetent Mayors a less costly way to hide themselves,...

In this paper we propose a simple model of bailing out that closely describes the intergovernmental relationships between the Central government and the regional governments in the Italian public health care sector. The theoretical model suggests that bail out expectations by regions can be...

Do citizens engage in comparative performance evaluation across local governments? And if they do, how can we disentangle this behavior from other forms of strategic interactions among local governments or simple spatial correlation across neighboring jurisdictions? We use spatial econometrics...

In this paper we propose a simple model of bailing out that closely describes the intergovernmental relationships between the Central government and the regional governments in the Italian public health care sector. The theoretical model suggests that bail out expectations by regions can be...

Allocative and redistributive rules in the public sector are often less contingent on available information than normative theory would suggest. This paper offers a political economy explanation. Under different rules, even if the observable outcomes of policies remain the same, the...