We explore how the presence of direct democracy across hierarchical levels of government in a federation affects the level of public expenditure. In so doing we revisit the effect of direct democratic institutions on public policies. Particularly, we are interested whether the effect of...

This paper studies how fiscal decentralization affects local services. It explores a 1993 reform that increased the fiscal autonomy of Italian municipalities by replacing government transfers with revenues from a local property tax. Our identifica- tion leverages cross-municipal variation in the...

"Funding the Canadian City, a collection of papers on municipal taxation and finance by leading experts, emerging scholars, and policy makers in the field, sets out the financial challenges facing municipalities in Canada today and examines various practical means--some established, others...

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have obtained the right to raise revenues locally to supplement central government grants in order to fund their activities. The extent to which they have used these local revenue-raising powers varies significantly across area and time. We seek to...