The federal Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) periodic release of updated metropolitan statistical area (MSA) definitions frequently garners significant attention from local economic development professionals and policymakers. The interest is grounded, in part, in the common belief that...

Previous literature generally finds that greater fiscal decentralization is associated with faster economic growth, improved government performance and stronger constraints on the Leviathan behaviour of governments. Because economic growth critically depends on the presence of good government...

We examine the US state-level pattern of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) spending. We relate spending to (1) Keynesian determinants of countercyclical policy, (2) congressional power and dominance, and (3) presidential electoral vote importance. We find that the ARRA is, in...

In the economic development literature, cultural diversity has been shown to have a positive impact on economic outcomes. A culturally diverse society or interaction among different cultures encourages exchange and competition and generates efficient outcome. Our paper hypothesizes that a...

Previous literature generally finds that greater fiscal decentralization is associated with faster economic growth, improved government performance, and stronger constraints on the Leviathan behavior of governments. Because economic growth critically depends on the presence of good government...

When safety regulation makes automobiles safer, drivers may drive more recklessly, creating partially or completely offsetting effects on the overall level of safety. Evidence of these offsetting effects has been hard to find, however, primarily because of the aggregate nature of accident data....

While it is now well-established in the literature that countries with better policies and institutions, as measured by the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index, have better outcomes in terms of prosperity, growth, and measures of human well-being. However, we know little about the process...