The article explores the content and consequences of the French constitutional reform of March 2003. Among the objectives of that reform, one is to preserve the tax autonomy for the local public sector; another is to ensure that the coming wave of devolution of competencies to decentralised...

The article formalizes and measures the impact of club size on the quality of the public good provided to its members. Under a general framework we describe various functional forms that allow either network or crowding effects. Mechanisms of provision are that of a political process in which...

This paper analyses intergovernmental transfers in France and Italy to assess how soft budget spending behaviors may result from slacks in institutional constraints or from phenomena related to political culture, like administrative practices or implementation of rules. It innovates on the...

This paper analyses intergovernmental transfers in France and Italy to assess to which extent soft budget spending behaviors result from slack in fiscal constraints or from political factors. It innovates on the previous literature, which concentrated on single countries, by adopting a...

The aim of the article is to consider the implications for local communities of the recent French constitutional reform. As far as distributive justice is concerned, the perspective is entirely renewed since the relations between the central government and the local public sector are now...

Fiscal relief of local governments by the central authorities has become a subject of major concern in the political economy of multi-level governments. Generally studied in federations, fiscally irresponsible behaviors are endogenous to the system of financial relations amongst levels of...

[eng] Infrastructure investments generate highly nonredeployable assets. Following Williamson, equity would be in this case the appropriate financial instrument. This article provides a microeconomic discussion of the use of equity as opposed to debt, using the concept of irreversibility. [fre]...