that, for comparative purposes, it measures government decision making at the local level rather than at the sub … overall ranking of countries on the closeness of their government to the people. The resulting index is associated with higher …

and the extent of government employment at three levels: federal, state and local. We find that increases in federal …, state and local government employments are all negatively associated with economic growth. We find no evidence that … government is more efficient at more decentralized levels. While we cannot separate out the productive and redistributive …