Studies of spatial policy interdependence in (local) public policies usually concentrate on the relations between jurisdictions within a single analysed region, and disregard possible extra-regional effects. This paper evaluates the validity of such restriction by studying German local...

We advance the literature on political budget cycles by testing separately for cycles in expenditures for elections in the legislative and the executive. Using municipal data, we can separately identify these cycles and account for general year effects. For the executive branch, we show that it...

This paper exploits the unique institutional features of South Africa to estimate the impact of provincial public spending on health, education and transport on firm productivity. Our identification strategy is based on within industry-province differences between firms of the effects of public...

The paper examines the role of the vertical structure of the public sector for economic growth in Germany in a long?term perspective. A theoretical model shows that, due to spillover effects of public service provision across lower level governments, federal government activities could have...

This paper investigates the long-term trend and the underlying determinants of public sector centralization in Germany from 1871 until today. The institutional and the quantitative review of the German history provides no conclusive evidence for a continuous process of government centralization...

This paper deals with the problems encountered in defining and measuring the degree of fiscal decentralization. Drawing on a recent analytical framework of the OECD, different measures of fiscal autonomy and revenue decentralization are presented which consider tax-raising powers of sub-central...

In diesem Beitrag wird auf der Basis von Paneldaten für die westdeutschen Bundesländer untersucht, ob und in welchem Maße der demographische Wandel sowie die unterschiedlichen politischen Parteienkonstellationen die Hochschulausgaben auf Länderebene beeinflussen. Wir finden empirische...

This paper uses a simple model of fiscal competition in taxes and public inputs among local jurisdictions to analyze the incentive effects of fiscal equalization transfers. We find that a budget-compensated increase in the contribution rate to a system of fiscal equalization not only induces...