This paper examines how sequential decision-making by two levels of government can result in vertical fiscal imbalances (VFI). Federal-regional transfers serve to equalize the marginal cost of public funds between regions hit by different shocks. The optimal vertical fiscal gap minimizes the...

Politicians typically do not know what policies are best for achieving their broad objectives, so rely on bureaucrats for advice. Bureaucrats are better informed, so can manipulate outcomes by proposing policies that suit their interests. We capture this conflict of interests using a model of...

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is commonly described as a powerful international force for legal integration. Indeed, past studies indicate that the ECJ has developed a supranational legal order that trumps national law in a broad range of economic policy areas. But this depiction of an...

Federal legislation currently holds institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teachers that they produce. However research has yet to demonstrate that teacher preparation programs (TPPs) have differential effects on the quality of teachers they produce in terms of student...

A large panel of German municipalities is employed in order to investigate the dynamic fiscal policy adjustment of local jurisdictions using a VEC model which explicitly takes account of the intertemporal budget constraint. The results confirm that a substantial part of adjustment takes place by...

State governments offer tax and location-based incentives to entice firms to locate or expand operations in their state. We evaluate the effect of these incentives on employment using a panel data of Kentucky counties. These data are unique because they contain information on actual incentives...

The question of what kind of civic virtues citizens of the United States need in order to maintain the republic and to enable it to flourish, is one that was on the minds of the Framers themselves. They recognized that good government would depend upon the moral character and intellectual...

The contemporary policy environment makes persistent demands on agency officials to use the best information available when making decisions about policies, programs, and practices. State and federal legislation calls on agencies to incorporate evidence-based practices in their programs. Using...

There is much evidence against the so-called "too big to fail" hypothesis in the case of bailouts to sub-national governments. We look at a model where districts of di_erent size provide local public goods with positive spillovers. Matching grants of a central government can induce...

We examine the impact of state taxation on employment by focusing on county employment in metropolitan statistical areas (MSA). However, we make a distinction between the impacts of state taxation on employment in metropolitan areas that are wholly contained within a single state and...