This work looks at the impact of electoral rules on female participation in local legislative bodies using a natural experiment involving a series of changes to electoral law in Poland. Using an exogenous population threshold dividing municipalities into ones with proportional and ones with...

This article studies the causal effect of electoral systems on fiscal outcomes using an empirical design exploiting a discontinuity in the application of electoral rules in Polish municipalities in the period 2002-2014. In that period, municipalities followed either majoritarian or proportional...

By constraining political incentives and discretion, the numerical fiscal rules are among the main institutional (legal) instruments to ensure fiscal discipline. As stated in this paper, in order to be effective, the numerical fiscal rules need to inflict sufficiently high costs for their...

This report demonstrates that the EU Member States vary with regard to store-based retail market integration (openness), measured in terms of economic contribution of foreign retailers to local retailing markets. While a high degree of integration, i.e. large presence and economic impact of...

Polish abstract: Dobre drogi obniżają koszty transportu. Redukując ryzyko nieterminowych dostaw, ułatwiają specjalizację. Pozwalając na wyjście ze sprzedażą poza lokalne rynki, umożliwiają czerpania korzyści z dużej skali produkcji. Dając możliwość szybkiego pokonywania dużych...

There is an abundant empirical literature demonstrating party favoritism whereby the central government is prone to disburse financial transfers to favor aligned local governments. This contrasts with much scarcer evidence on reverse party favoritism, i.e. aligned local governments offering...

Fiscal constitutions comprise the set of rules and frameworks guiding fiscal policy that are enshrined in a country’s fundamental laws. This paper compares the fiscal constitutions of 15 federal countries by empirically assessing five building blocks: 1) the power of sub-national governments...