In this paper we offer a comprehensive and updated review of the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economy, society and politics. We start with the examination of two crucial and yet unsolved issues in the literature on decentralization: its proper measurement and the potential...

Considerable attention has been given to enhancing subnational development finance in response to the 2008 global financial crisis and recent global development agendas, including the Sustainable Development Goals, Financing for Development, and Habitat III/New Urban Agenda. Much work on this...

Fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental fiscal relations reform have become nearly ubiquitous in developing countries. Performance, however, has often been disappointing in terms of both policy formulation and outcomes. The dynamics underlying these results have been poorly researched....

We measure the contribution of fiscal decentralization to trust in government. Using repeated cross-country survey data of individuals on several measures of trust in government over the 1994-2007 period, we estimate an ordered response model of the government trust and fiscal decentralization...

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the role of governments in a public health emergency not only in developing countries but in the developed world as well. This paper has a two-fold objective. First, we investigate the efficiency of COVID management using state-level data from...

This paper explores the role of information transmission and misaligned interests across levels of government in explaining variation in the degree of decentralization across countries. Within a two-sided incomplete information principal-agent framework, it analyzes two alternative...

This paper explores the role of information transmission and misaligned interests across levels of government in explaining variation in the degree of decentralization across countries. Within a two-sided incomplete information principal-agent framework, it analyzes two alternative...

Democracy and ballot box voting have often been held up as central elements of the American political tradition. Less emphasis has been placed on the centrality of “voting with your feet.” Yet in many ways, it is an even more fundamental and distinctive feature of American politics than...

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant about politics and government. Many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This creates a nation...

In his important new book, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that growing economic inequality over the last several decades and the resulting decline of the middle class is “the number one threat to American constitutional government.” He also contends that...