Intergovernmental fiscal frameworks usually reflect fundamental societal choices and history and are not foremost geared towards achieving economic policy objectives. Yet, like most institutional arrangements, fiscal relations affect the behaviour of firms, households and governments and thereby...

We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates...

Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life. Also, if elites have more human capital, selecting on...

In this paper we investigate the interplay between national rainy-day funds and supra-national transfers in a fiscal union. Given that the EU has established rules limiting deficits, national rainy-day funds could in theory provide a way for countries to obey the rules and use fiscal policy, yet...

This paper analyzes the interconnection between elites and its effects on economic growth. For decades, the bureaucratic elite has been joining the business elite after leaving office, and this in growing numbers. This relationship has been termed "the revolving door" in English, "pantouflage"...

In this paper, we present and illustrate novel data on more than a century of regulation in Switzerland. We provide quantitative measures for Swiss cantons on the annual stock of legally binding rules from 2006-2013 and on regulatory activity as reflected in the annual changes to such regulation...

This paper studies Comprehensive Performance Assessment, an explicit incentive scheme for local government in England. Motivated by a simple theoretical political agency model, we predict that CPA should increase service quality and local taxation, but have an ambiguous effect on the efficiency...

Michael Greve's The Upside-Down Constitution is one of the most important works on constitutional federalism in years. It is the best exposition to date of the idea that the American Constitution establishes a federal system primarily devoted to promoting competition between state governments....

This Article examines the scope of Sorrell v. IMS Health, its potential impact on legislative efforts to enact comprehensive consumer privacy legislation, and its implications for targeted Internet advertising. Part I provides a general overview of ad-targeting technology, emphasizing the...

In many countries, important features of municipal government (such as the electoral system, mayors' salaries, and the number of councillors) depend on whether the municipality is above or below arbitrary population thresholds. Several papers have used a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to...