This study investigates the effects of introducing elections on public good expenditures, income distribution and land use in rural China. We collect a large and unique survey to document the history of political reforms and economic policies and exploit the staggered timing of the introduction...

Court decisions in the past twenty years such as Southern Burlington County NAACP v. Mount Laurel Associated, as well as recent legislation, have made exclusionary zoning laws based on race illegal and have limited, at least in many states, the legality of exclusionary zoning based on income....

I discuss recent contributions to the theory of group formation and the provision of jointly consumed public goods and services. I highlight the distinction between models of pure group formation, and models where the formation of groups and the sharing of public goods are constrained by a...

States are ill equipped to meet the challenges of a globalized world. The concept of citizenship with its rights and obligations, including the allegiance owed, is too narrowly defined to exist only between individuals and a state. Today, people identify with, and pay allegiance to, many...

We study the direct and spillover effects of local state capacity using the network of Colombian municipalities. We model the determination of local and national state capacity as a network game in which each municipality, anticipating the choices and spillovers created by other municipalities...

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 different size provide local public goods with positive spillovers. Matching grants of a central government can induce...

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...

Iowa provided partial state funding to communities to build tourist attractions, a potential solution to local under-provision of public goods. A 10 percent increase in state funds increased county taxable retail sales by 0.1 percent. The State’s return from resulting sales tax revenue...

Local government units (LGU) are nowadays facing the very difficult and complicated task of making reasonable decisions regarding the transforming of SPZOZs into capital companies. First, it seems necessary to carry out a simulation of costs and advantages of the assumed models and solutions...

The expected increase in aid to Africa will put a big challenge for public service delivery. Using a simultaneous equation model, this paper provides an analysis of the effects of the volume and volatility of aid on education, health, water and sanitation outcomes, taking also into account the...