This paper tests the existence of strategic interactions among municipalities using a panel of Belgian local tax rates from 1985 to 2004. A special emphasis is put on the role of the language spoken in the various municipalities. Our results first confirm previous findings for Belgium suggesting...

The paper adds to the existing literature on the determinants of government spending in Research and Development (R&D) by considering the role of strategic interactions among countries as one of the possible competing explanations, within a spatial econometric framework. We account for several...

La 4e de couverture indique : "Ce manuel composé de six chapitres analyse le champ de l'économie du secteur public local. Il présente les principaux arguments économiques en faveur de la décentralisation des décisions publiques et aborde un ensemble de concepts et d'instruments traitant...

We analyze voluntary coalition formation using a unique panel data for 1,056 municipalities in the French region of Brittany between 1995 and 2002. We use a control function approach to develop a binary discrete choice model with spatial interactions. We find that a municipality's decision to...

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of fiscal cooperation on local taxation in a decentralized country, using the French experience in urban municipalities. We estimate a model of tax setting for local business tax using spatial and dynamic econometric techniques, for the...

The aim of this paper is to test the presence of strategic interactions in government spending on Research and Development (R&D), among EU-15 countries. We add to the literature on public choice strategic interactions in general, and to work on R&D spending in particular. We take account of...