This paper explores the impact of fiscal decentralization on fiscal policy performance in a large sample of advanced and developing economies. The findings suggest that a larger share of decentralized expenditure is associated with a stronger fiscal balance; however, fiscal decentralization can...

Structural transformation has resulted in an increasing share of services in aggregate value-added in advanced and developing countries across the world. We analyze the impact of this shift into services on countries' efficiency in collecting the value-added tax (VAT). The analysis is based on...

This paper explores the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public service delivery. It uses a stochastic frontier method to estimate time-varying efficiency coefficients and analyzes the impact of fiscal decentralization on those efficiency coefficients. The findings indicate...

Does the reliance on diversified tax structure enhance resilience to fiscal risks? This paper gives an answer to this question by proposing a new cross-country tax revenue diversification index (RDI). The RDI builds on the Theil index, and unlike the few existing tax diversification indices,...

While there is extensive literature examining the growth and development effects of foreign aid, very little attention has been paid to its potential impact on social mobility. Thus, this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of foreign aid on intergenerational educational...