Governments in low-income countries are increasingly integrating off-grid electricity provision into national electrification strategies, creating novel, decentralized markets for electricity. This paper studies a highly decentralized product that plays an important role in energy access: pay as...

In response to the challenges posed by an increasingly decentralized energy system characterized by a high penetration of renewable energy sources, grid operators are experiencing heightened pressure to effectively manage grid congestion. Concurrently, both the European Union as well as the...

The Philippines embraced a devolution agenda in 1991, leading to the enactment of the Local Government Code (LGC). Despite over three decades of implementation, devolution has remained incomplete, giving rise to the blurred accountability between the national government and local governments...

Purpose - The current scenario shows increased adoption of off-chain voting applications in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to avoid complexity and costs for user engagement in their governance. This paper aims to comprehend the trends and patterns within the DAO community with...

Fiscal federalism concerns the division of policy responsibilities among different levels of government. Many current economic and policy developments, such as globalization, environmental crises and rising inequality, may not appear to be favorable to fiscal federalism, yet countries are...

Russia's attack on Ukraine has revealed the need to reassess Europe's security. Currently, the European Union is a politically fragmented and divided union of member states, economically underperforming, with a defense capability that is insufficient without the support of the USA. The European...

This paper explores the nuanced relationship between fiscal decentralization and fiscal sustainability. Employing panel data analyses, it scrutinizes how decentralization influences fiscal discipline across different governmental levels. Results for 185 countries show that while tax...

We examine the human development consequences of transferring responsibility for public service provision to local governments in India, using state-level variation in the timing of administrative decentralization reforms. We find that devolution of the responsibility for health functions from...

Interest in socialism is growing throughout the world. But "socialism" too often simply means belief in equality, democracy, and solidarity with working and oppressed people. That vision remains crucial; but we also need to re-develop the theory of a socialist system -not just a middle path, a...

Although European institutions and national governments have long pushed for a more decentralized wage bargaining structure, in some countries company or establishment-level negotiations struggle to take place. This paper offers an interpretation for that based on workers' optimal choices in an...

Changes in political boundaries aimed at devolving power to local governments are common in many countries. We examine the economic consequences of redistricting through the creation of smaller government units. Exploiting reforms that led to sharp variations in the number of government units in...

We take a decentralized approach to regulating environmental pollution in settings where each agent's pollution possibly affects all others. There is no central agency to enforce pollution abatement or coordinate monetary transfers. Moreover, agents possess private information, which precludes...