Do voters value the quality of local public goods, such as whether pavements are clean, whether benches in the park need repair, or whether local roads are in good shape? Using almost 150,000 geo-located complaints that were posted on the complaint-platform FixMyStreet.com between 2007 and 2011,...

In this paper we investigate the demand for local public school expenditures in Sweden using survey data, a method previously never applied to Swedish data. We compare our results to those of earlier US studies, where the same method is used in a different institutional setup. Estimating a...

This paper investigates the potential of civic crowdfunding as an innovative and collective option for contributing to the production of local public goods. It is articulated around two pillars. The first section provides a general understanding of crowdfunding practices and focuses principally...

We analyze the strategic interaction of regional and federal governments using a model that includes fiscal externalities in the form of inter-regional capital tax competition and technical externalities in the form of inter-regional spillovers. The federal government aims to correct for these...

Advocates of fiscal decentralization argue that amongst other benefits, it can increase the efficiency of delivery of government services. This paper is one of the first to evaluate this claim empirically by looking at the association between expenditure decentralization and the productive...

Batabyal and Beladi (2019) have recently analyzed a model of competition between two cities that use a local public good (LPG) to attract members of the creative class. The creative class consists of artists and engineers and they study the behavior of a representative artist and an engineer. In...

Batabyal and Beladi (2019) have recently analyzed a model of competition between two cities that use a local public good (LPG) to attract members of the creative class. The creative class consists of artists and engineers and they study the behavior of a representative artist and an engineer. In...

Advocates of fiscal decentralization argue that amongst other benefits, it can increase the efficiency of delivery of government services. This paper is one of the first to evaluate this claim empirically by looking at the association between education expenditure decentralization and the...

When local public goods are provided by a centralized authority, spillovers are internalized, but heterogeneity in preferences may be suppressed. Besley and Coate (2003) recently examined this classic trade-off for a uniform tax regime with strategic delegation. Here, we extend their approach by...