This article examines how fiscal decentralization can help improve economic growth (assuming predatory governments). The calculation of the optimal level of regionalism involves a trade-off between the positive effect due to "proximity", and the negative effect linked to "coordination failures"...

Decentralization is increasing in all parts of the world. Assessing the efficiency of decentralization as a means to mitigate ethnic conflict is then of primarily importance. This paper builds a simple model of decentralization as an empowerment mechanism. It suggests that decentralization could...

While some scholars argue that fiscal decentralization gave Chinese local officials strong incentives to promote local economic growth, traditional fiscal federalism theories are not directly relevant to explain such an effect in the particular context of China. In this paper, we explain the...

African politics are often said to be dominated by ethnic divides, with the ensuing policies implemented by leaders being based almost exclusively on their ethnic power base. In this paper, we demonstrate that the identity of leaders matters for the attribution of development projects in the...

While there is a large body of literature on the determinants of allocation of intergovernmental …fiscal transfers in developed countries, this kind of study is still very limited for developing countries, especially Subsaharan countries. Using an original micro-level public fi…nance panel...