We discuss two essential problems of the political economy of public finances: The principal agent problem between voters and elected politicians and the common pool problem arising from the fact that money drawn from a general tax fund is used to pay for policies targeting more or less narrow...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a quot;fiscal deficit biasquot; and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this...

Public budgeting in perspective -- Budgetary decision making -- Budget organization and structure -- Economics and politics -- Taxing and spending -- National budgeting -- Budgeting in the states -- Budgeting in local units of government -- Budget execution and financial management -- Patterns...

Public budgeting in perspective -- Budgetary decision making -- Budget organization and structure -- Economics and politics -- Taxing and spending -- National budgeting -- Budgeting in the states -- Budgeting in local units of government -- Fiscal federalism and intergovernmental fiscal...

This paper studies budget processes, both theoretically and experimentally. We compare the outcomes of bottom-up and top-down budget processes. It is often presumed that a top-down budget process leads to a smaller overall budget than a bottom-up budget process. Ferejohn and Krehbiel (1987)...

This paper surveys the empirical research on fiscal institutions of the last three decades. The main results are: (i) Constitutional or statutory fiscal limitations have in most cases proved to be effective in cutting down public expenditure, revenue, and debt. (ii) Budgetary proce-dures matter...

This is the first study which estimates costs and benefits of overall policy reform for implementation of performance based budgeting. Costs estimation is based on a phased implementation, where we consult the Regulatory Impact Assessment methodology. In order to estimate benefits, we use a...

This paper studies budget processes, both theoretically and experimentally. We compare the outcomes of bottom-up and top-down budget processes. It is often presumed that a top-down budget process leads to a smaller overall budget than a bottom-up budget process. Ferejohn and Krehbiel (1987)...