The traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role of macroeconomic stabilization to the federal government. In addition to this long-standing theoretical result, there is empirical observation that federal governments in developing countries typically have cheaper and more stable...

In shifting to decentralized public finances, a country's central government faces certain fiscal management problems. First, during and soon after the transition, unless it reduces pending or increases its own tax resources, the central government tends to have higher deficits as it shifts...

Fiscal responsibility laws are institutions with which multiple governments in the same economy -- national and subnational --can commit to help avoid irresponsible fiscal behavior that could have short-term advantages to one of them but that would be collectively damaging. Coordination failures...

This paper extends the North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) framework for understanding the problems of development. Our approach distinguishes two development problems that are normally conflated. Most approaches to development focus on the second problem, namely, the transition of societies from...

Fiscal responsibility laws are institutions with which multiple governments in the same economy -- national and subnational --can commit to help avoid irresponsible fiscal behavior that could have short-term advantages to one of them but that would be collectively damaging. Coordination failures...

The upper-income, advanced industrial countries of the world today all have market economies with open competition, competitive multi-party democratic political systems, and a secure government monopoly over violence. Such open access orders, however, are not the only norm and equilibrium type...

To bring fiscal discipline to state and municipal governments, Mexico's federal government has established a two-pillar framework that explicitly renounces federal bail-outs and establishes a Basel-consistent link between the capital-risk weighting of bank loans to subnational governments and...

Webb and Gonzalez consider the malaise with the present set-up of fiscal federalism in Mexico from the points of view of the main players - the federal government, the states, the municipalities, and the citizen voters - in order to identify the areas of potential common interest as well as the...

Institutional arrangements have helped Colombia manage the fiscal aspects of decentralization, despite the country's political problems.Colombia's political geography contrasts sharply with its economy. Physical characteristics and guerilla war fragment the country geographically, yet it has a...