This article analyses the redistributive efficiency of public spending and taxation in a panel of both advanced and developing economies during the last three decades (1984-2012). In order to explore how redistribution is achieved through fiscal policies, a two-stage approach is applied. First,...

This paper examines whether electoral motives and government ideology influence short-term economic performance. I employ data on annual GDP growth in 21 OECD countries over the 1951-2006 period and provide a battery of empirical tests. In countries with two-party systems GDP growth is boosted...

What keeps corruption in check? Politicians have incentives to both avoid and actively oppose corruption when voters can hold them accountable for it. But to punish malfeasance voters have to know about it, and corrupt actors don’t want such information to be easy to find. Moreover, we argue...

This paper empirically evaluates whether government ideology and electoral motives influenced the growth of public health expenditures in 18 OECD countries over the 1971-2004 period. The results suggest that incumbents behaved opportunistically and increased the growth of public health...