This paper aims at testing whether there exist spending interactions between French municipalities by estimating a dynamic panel data model. Our results suggest that there are some interactions between neighbouring municipalities as regards primary and investment expenditures. A positive...

The aim of this paper is to test the presence of strategic interactions in government spending on Research and Development (R&D), among EU-15 countries. We add to the literature on public choice strategic interactions in general, and to work on R&D spending in particular. We take account of...

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of fiscal cooperation on local taxation in a decentralized country, using the French experience in urban municipalities. We estimate a model of tax setting for local business tax using spatial and dynamic econometric techniques, for the...

Cooperation among local governments has been encouraged to enable the aggregation of resources and improved public sector efficiency. However, if cooperation through the joint delivery of local public services is likely to be welfare enhancing for the agglomeration, but will lead to losses for...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of inter-municipal fiscal cooperation on municipal public spending, based on the French experience. We estimate a model of municipal spending choice using panel data and spatial econometrics for municipalities over the period 1994-2003. We...

This paper tests the existence of strategic interactions among municipalities using a panel of Belgian local tax rates from 1985 to 2004. A special emphasis is put on the role of the language spoken in the various municipalities. Our results first confirm previous findings for Belgium suggesting...