We develop a database of the characteristics of the financial reporting function for all 482 California cities from 2013 to 2018, including the name and title of the individual who prepares the financial statements and the resources devoted to administrative duties. We find that financial...

The South Korean Ministry of Environment, Korea Environmental Industry and Technology Institute, Ministry of Economy and Finance, and Public Procurement Service are working collaboratively to promote green purchasing policies across all levels of South Korean government. A primary reason for...

In 2019, the Spanish government published a Presidential Order approving the General State Administration’s Green Public Procurement Plan. This plan covers all public administrations including the General State Administration, its autonomous bodies, and social security management entities. Its...

Privatization of government services has been touted as a cost-savings approach for state agencies, promising to harness the efficiencies of market forces to overcome the perceived inefficiencies of bureaucracies. Empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that such savings rarely materialize,...

This paper analyzes the flow of state pension benefit payments relative to asset levels and contributions. Assuming future state contributions fund the full present value of new benefits, many state systems will run out of money in 10-20 years if some attempt is not made to improve the funding...

Public-sector pension plans administered by CalPERS face scrutiny because of large unfunded liabilities. The current underfunding is usually blamed on investment losses that occurred during the recent economic downturn. This paper finds that the true culprit is inaccurate actuarial forecasting,...

When local public goods are provided by a centralized authority, spillovers are internalized, but heterogeneity in preferences may be suppressed. Besley and Coate (2003) recently examined this classic trade-off for a uniform tax regime with strategic delegation. Here, we extend their approach by...

We examine the interplay of the economy and state and local budgets by developing and examining two measures of fiscal policy: the high-employment budget and fiscal impetus. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in cyclical GDP results in a 0.1 percentage point increase in NIPA-based net...

There is considerable regional variation in incomes and poverty in the Czech Republic and gaps have grown over time. With the highest number of municipalities per head in the OECD, subnational government is very fragmented and the resulting lack of capacity at the local level reduces the quality...

Despite the extensive literature on distributive politics, we still lack a theory of how political and fiscal institutions interact to shape the pork‐barrelling ability of national leaders in a federal parliamentary democracy. Focusing on party system attributes and governmental incentives...