Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate conditions under which voters’ comparison of relative performance between adjacent jurisdictions can help reduce rent-seeking by politicians. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical model was developed to examine the effectiveness...

The paper examines the temporal relationship between revenues and expenditures for the four southern states during 1980 to 2005. Using an error-correction model and Granger causality test, it finds that the taxspend hypothesis is supported by the analsysis. The spend-tax hypothesis is valid for...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate conditions under which voters’ comparison of relative performance between adjacent jurisdictions can help reduce rent‐seeking by politicians. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical model was developed to examine the effectiveness...

This paper investigates the relationship between electoral incentives, institutions and corruption. We assume that voters use a yardstick criterion. The incumbent provides a public good and extracts rent, which are financed by imposing a distortionary tax. We demonstrate the possibility that...

We analyze the role of political parties in the provision of public goods within a federal economy. The public goods are federally funded but locally produced (with costly local revenues), and have interjurisdictional spillover effects. The direction and magnitude of fund flow, which ultimately...