Unlike previous empirical work concerning investment behavior and the determinants of liquidity constraints, we use a switching regression framework when sample separation is unknown and endogenous and firms are assumed to operate either in the financially constrained or in the financially...

Government spending plays a critical role in protecting and enforcing rights and civil liberties. Empirical evidence for a sample of industrial and developing countries shows that government expenditures on defense, law and order, social security, education, and health care are associated with...

The government's incentives to bail out inefficient projects are determined by the trade-off between political benefits and economic costs, the latter depending on the decentralization of government. Two effects of federalism are derived: First, fiscal competition among local governments under...