We present a dynamic two-region model with overlapping generations. There are two types of public expenditure, education and infrastructure funding, and governments decide optimally on budget size (tax rate) and its allocation across the two outlays. Productivity of government infrastructure...

This article develops a conceptual, methodological, and theoretical framework for analyzing dynamic decentralization in federations. It first reviews the literature and outlines the research design and methods adopted. It then conceptualizes static decentralization and describes the seven-point...

Without a stable and adequate tax base, countries lose the financial capacity to provide the infrastructure, social services and development opportunities important to their citizens. In response, the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) organized the project...

Congress packages pork-barrel spending in complicated proposals that belie theories of distributive politics. We theorize that roll-call voting on such bills depends on grant programs' administrative centralization, party ties with presidents or home-state governors, and differences in...

In this paper I run a regression discontinuity design analysis to document the causal effect of mayor's wage on procurement outcomes in a large data base of public procurement contracts in Italy. To identify the wage effect, I use peculiarities of the Italian legislation where mayor's...

Private firms often withhold information or contest scientific knowledge when public revelation could lead to costly regulations or liability. This concealment leads to negative externalities and public harm. But what if private firms' superior knowledge and self-interest could be harnessed to...

Scholars have argued about the impact of fiscal decentralisation on public spending for a long time without coming to any firm theoretical and empirical conclusions. In contrast to earlier studies, this paper looks at the impact of fiscal decentralisation across different types of spending. It...

This paper studies constitutional restrictions on the tax base that protect future generations from expropriation and improve the optimality of investment in Intergenerational Public Goods (IPGs). The choice of the tax base matters because it affects how intergenerational (IG) spillovers are...

Confidence seems to replace certain knowledge and the necessity for specific information. It simplifies economical processes and procedures, it motivates investing, and obviously, it enhances welfare — if it was missing, innumerable dealings would not be made. Consequently, if confidence among...

The paper tries to shed some light on the problems of centralization and decentralization within an economic union and the federal member states. Integration and decentralization are not opposite policy strategies but both meaningful if the single public goods and services supplies are analyzed...