This paper investigates the impact of the abolition of the civil service exam on local governance in early twentieth-century China. Before the abolition, local elites collected surtaxes that financed local public goods, but they were supervised by the state and could lose candidacy for higher...

Centralized tax administration is the hallmark of the modern fiscal state. This paper evaluates a commitment problem inherent in establishing fiscal centralization: could states credibly promise to use centralized tax revenues to finance prespecified local government expenditures? We examine how...

Centralized tax administration is the hallmark of the modern fiscal state. This paper evaluates a commitment problem inherent in establishing fiscal centralization: could states credibly promise to use centralized tax revenues to finance prespecified local government expenditures? We examine how...

The authors investigate the relationship between foreign technology imports and economic growth in developing countries. They develop an intertemporal endogenous growth model that explicitly accepts foreign technology imports as a factor of production. The model establishes a link between the...

Differences in information between senders and receivers can result in inefficiency due to adverse selection or moral hazard. Therefore, one critical issue of organization design is how to induce truth-telling from the informed but biased agent by restructuring organizational forms. This study...