Several of the transition economies are devolving fiscal authority to subnational governments at a time when it is also important to consolidate fiscal policy. This can be problematic because, without appropriate care, the central governments ability to determine the level and structure of...

This paper explores the benefits and costs of the voter initiative, a direct democracy device that allows voters to make policy decisions without involving their elected representatives. Previous research suggests that by introducing quot;competitionquot; into the proposal process, the...

The median United States voter supports the legalization of marijuana, at least in part due to a desire to increase state tax revenues. However, states with legal markets have implemented wildly different regulatory schemes with tax rates ranging from 3.75 to 37 percent, indicating that policy...

This paper surveys the extensive literature that seeks to estimate the effect of the initiative and referendum on public policy. The evidence on the referendum uniformly finds that requiring voter approval for new spending (or new debt) results in lower spending (or lower debt). The initiative...

Firstly, two seemingly unrelated topics of Russian politics are investigated. It is shown that under expected utility maximization the assumptions of an unbiased oil forward market and a risk-acceptant attitude (strictly convex utility function) of president Putin are sufficient to explain...

We demonstrate that the nationalities of EU Commissioners influence budget allocation decisions in favor of their country of origin. Our focus is on the Commissioners for Agriculture, who are exclusive responsible for a specific fund that accounts for the largest share of the overall EU budget....

Greek Abstract: Το κεφάλαιο επικεντρώνεται στην εξέταση της εξέλιξης του κοινωνικού κράτους στην Ελλάδα από το δεύτερο μισό του 20ού αιώνα και εφεξής επιδιώκοντας...

German municipalities have substantial autonomy in setting taxes on two distinct tax bases: business profits and property values. We use this setting and a two-step approach to explore whether implemented tax policy is consistent with the seminal inverse-elasticity rule. First, we estimate the...

Transparency in government actions strengthens the relationship between government and society. The goal of the present study was to ascertain the level of transparency of administrative information in the south of Brazil. This descriptive study, which employed statistical methodology, found a...

This study estimates the effect of state legislative term limits on state tax revenue, general expenditure and its main components: welfare, highways, health, education, and state aid to local governments. Two alternative measures of term limits are used: an original term limit index developed...