Based on a sample of 227 elections in seventeen Western European countries over the period of 1945-1998, this paper examines to what extent party systems are shaped by fiscal and political decentralization. With the exception of a few special cases, empirical evidence does not support the...

The aim of this paper is to shed additional light on the determinants of budget transparency in local governments. Our work is based on a Likert-type survey questionnaire specifically designed to measure budget transparency in small municipalities. The questionnaire is based on the IMF’s...

This paper studies the effect of political variables on the gains obtained by Spanish regions in periodical bargaining of the intergovernmental financing agreements and on the regional distribution of discretional earmarked grants over the period 1987-2008. First, we find that the relationship...

The aim of this paper is to analyse cross-country differences in the degree of inter-regional redistribution achieved by means of taxes and expenditures in 21 European countries over the period 1995-2009. We rely on a standard approach based on the observation and comparison of both primary and...

This paper tests the hypothesis that, by giving people more voice in the government decision-making process, fiscal decentralisation fosters social capital, measured in terms of interpersonal trust. Empirical evidence based on World Values Survey data and seemingly unrelated probit estimations...

The need for infrastructure building, replacement and updating is large worldwide and governments - particularly subnational governments - will need to mobilise budgetary resources while simultaneously restoring public finances to sound health and meeting other spending pressures. This paper...

In this paper causality between taxes and expenditures is reexamined, suggesting that electoral cycle may be a relevant explicative factor. Using a data set from a wide sample of Spanish municipalities, I test if causal relationships between budgetary variables is effectively affected by the...

Do political institutions shape the structure of public spending? Based on a sample of 141 elections in eighteen Western European countries over the period 1970-1998, this paper shows that governments’ margin of maneuverability to design and implement fiscal policies depends on the level of...

High debt autonomy and low tax autonomy often characterize evolving federations, making the bailout hypothesis very attractive in resolving subcentral government deficits. However, meeting both conditions is not enough to conclude that bailout expectations are the main reason for a potential...