This paper investigates the role of political representation in explaining regional variation in fiscal transfers in Belgium. Using Eurostat data for the years 1995 to 2008, we find that on average per capita cash fiscal transfers – consisting of the net amount of federal income taxes and...

We calculate that over the 1970-2002 period the combination of persistent primary surpluses of the Flemish region and persistent primary deficits of the Walloon region – and to a lesser extent of the Brussels region – increased the net fiscal transfer due to the federal debt provided by...

We investigate if a more populous or fragmented executive or legislative increases public spending, an effect known as “the Law of 1/n”. We test this for the supra-local governments of Belgium. On the basis of our dataset – including rather few “cross-sections” as well as rather few...

This paper studies the effects of Belgian fiscal federalism/fiscal decentralisation on the size of government and on the overall fiscal balance. The effects of Belgian fiscal federalism/fiscal decentralisation have so far hardly been studied empirically. This holds in particular for the...