We explore the effects of exposure to conflict and violence on civic compliance with the law. Using newly digitized historical records of income declarations and tax audits from post-World War I Italy, we show that losing a relative as a direct result of the war reduces tax compliance. To...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the effect of Fox News Channel (FNC) on elections in the United States. FNC is the highest-rated channel on cable television and has a documented conservative slant. We show that FNC has helped Republican candidates in elections across levels of...

In this paper I investigate whether changes in the availability of direct democratic institutions in local Swiss jurisdictions affect expenditure decentralization. By using a panel-based difference in differences estimation I find a statistically significant reduction in decentralization when...

We explore the effects of exposure to conflict and violence on civic compliance with the law. Using newly digitized historical records of income declarations and tax audits from post-World War I Italy, we show that losing a relative as a direct result of the war reduces tax compliance. To...

Pension benefit guarantee policies have been introduced in several countries to protect private pension plan members from the loss of income that would occur if a plan was underfunded when the sponsoring firm terminates a plan. Most of these public insurance schemes face financial difficulty and...

It is widely recognized that ?market failure? prevents efficient risk sharing in natural disaster insurance. As a consequence, many countries adopted institutional frameworks presenting public sector participation, often praised as public-private partnerships. We define risk selection as a...

This paper studies the evolution of hurricane insurance in Florida over the last decades. Hurricanes (and other natural catastrophes) are typically referred to as uninsurable" risks. The more exposed property owners find it difficult to obtain insurance cover from the private market and/or can...

Fiscal decentralization is high on the agenda in policy fora. This paper empirically investigates the underlying causes of fiscal decentralization, based on the predictions of a simple political economy model. We argue that the likeliness that a central government engages in devolution of powers...

This paper empirically investigates the underlying determinants of expenditure decentral- ization, based on the predictions of a new political economy model of partial decentralization. The analysis is based on an agency model, in which two levels of government are involved in the provision of a...