In their role as agenda setters and implementers of political decisions, bureaucrats potentially have the power to influence decisions in their own favor. It is however difficult to empirically test whether bureaucrats actually are involved in such actions. In this paper we suggest and apply a...

We show that imposition of a state-level environmental tax in a federation crowds out preexisting federal taxes. We explain how this vertical fiscal externality can lead unilateral state-level environmental policy to generate a welfare gain in the implementing state, at the expense of other...

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while...

At borders where rich and poor countries meet, services prices differ hugely. In principle, price differentials could be exploited to mutual benefit, offering improved job opportunities to the poor as well as better shopping opportunities to the rich. However, cross-border shopping is often...

This paper analyzes whether changes in the timing of equalizing transfers to state governments necessitate an adjustment in federal corrective policy. According to the existing literature (assuming an ex-ante choice of transfers), the corrective grant is equal to the marginal damage/benefit...

Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on intra]jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical impacts on the finances of other levels of governments have yet to be explored thoroughly. The paper investigates the influence of...

A gradually introduced reform of local government accounting made it temporarily likely for municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to avoid the effective control of their budget by the authorities in charge with overseeing local government budgets and enforcing the existing...

The dynamic fiscal policy adjustment of local jurisdictions is investigated empirically using a panel of more than 1000 U.S. municipalities over a quarter of a century. Distinguishing own revenues, grants, expenditures, and debt service, the analysis is carried out using a vector error...