This dissertation investigates empirically the consequences of recent fiscal policy changes on China?s rural development. It uses a county-level dataset covering over 90 percent of rural counties and a period of 13 years since 1993, in which China started to experience a series of fiscal reforms...

This dissertation contributes to the definition of an analytical framework for the study of optimal jurisdictional size for local service delivery. We argue that the standard economics framework for the analysis of optimal jurisdictional size importantly neglects individual preferences for...

This dissertation contains three essays. In Chapter 2, I investigate the causal factors of the soft budget constraint (SBC) problem. Based on a panel dataset from a survey of Chinese enterprises, the test results support the policy burden hypothesis but not the ownership hypothesis. The findings...

This dissertation examines the implementation of decentralization in Indonesia andmeasures the incentives of fiscal decentralization on state efficiency and economicgrowth. Efficiency of state governments in utilizing fiscal resources to support privatesector development and accelerate economic...