Signature requirements are often used as hurdles to prevent overuse of public referenda. We evaluate the causal effect of lowering signature requirements on the number of observed citizen initiatives. Based on municipality-level data for Germany, we make use of legislative changes at specific...

In many countries, important features of municipal government (such as the electoral system, mayors' salaries, and the number of councillors) depend on whether the municipality is above or below arbitrary population thresholds. Several papers have used a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to...

Using a nationwide county-level panel dataset for the years 1995-2009, this paper conducts the first analysis in the literature to examine the impacts of fiscal decentralization and fiscal equalization, both measured at the sub-provincial level, on intra-provincial inequality in China. While...

Across countries we observe very different institutional arrangements and very different levels of fiscal centralization. The recent years have witnessed strong movements for both decentralization and secession. At the same time, a divided country has reunified (Germany), large free trade zones...

This paper presents a simple positive model that unifies most of the results of the normative literature on fiscal federalism. The model describes an economy characterized by two levels of government, one public good, and a private good. The predictions of the model are tested by using a new set...

Pork barrel spending is typically attributed to the strategic behavior of political elites hoping to be electorally rewarded by voters residing in their districts. Such behavior is expected to depend on the incentives imposed by the electoral system. We estimate the causal effect of local...

Empirical work on the causal effect of government fragmentation finds diversified results. This might be explained by the fact that studies typically are settled in different institutional environments. To assess in how far the political system might shape the effects of fragmentation, this...

Beginning with the recent reorganisation of the principal Italian public research bodies, which has led to the founding of larger labs, this paper evaluates the presence of statistically significant relationships between the dimensions of the research bodies and the performance of the same. The...

Why are some nations more effective at battling corruption than others? Are there different determinants in the fight against corruption across developing nations? How do wealth effects play-out when existing corruption-control levels matter in the corruption battle? To investigate these...