This paper studies the relationship between fiscal decentralization and electoral accountability, by analysing how decentralization impacts upon incentive and selection effects, and thus on voter welfare. The model abstracts from features such as public good spillovers or economies of scale, so...

This paper studies fiscal federalism when regions differ in voters’ ability to monitor public officials. We develop a model of political agency in which rent-seeking politicians provide public goods to win support from heterogeneously informed voters. In equilibrium, voter information...

This paper examines the impact of the political party structure on the incentives for politicians to focus on patronage versus service delivery improvements in Pakistan. By analysing inter-provincial variations in the quality of service delivery in Pakistan, the paper argues that the more...

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between officeholder and the electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the officeholder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has...

This thesis consists of five independent chapters, studying how economic agents respond to unanticipated shocks. Chapter 1 shows that a well-intentioned policy can create unintended barrier to voting by creating seemingly small shocks to voting costs. Election administrators in Munich control...

In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that policy makers' choices concerning health spent at the local level are spatially correlated and electorally oriented. We check the influence of a set of demographic, electoral and economic determinants of public health activity. We performed a spatial...

Why are U.S. congressmen reluctant to support gun control regulations, despite the fact that most Americans are in favor of them? We argue that re-election motives can lead politicians to take a pro-gun stance against the interests of an apathetic majority of the electorate, but in line with the...

The United States has state of the art technology and world renowned expertise in medical treatment, yet in terms of healthcare it shows a dramatically poor performance in relation to the other industrialized countries. This situation is surprising, since one would expect that a free market...

How do health crises affect election results? We combine a panel of election results from 1893-1933 with spatial heterogeneity in excess mortality due to the 1918 Influenza to assess the pandemic's effect on voting behavior across German constituencies. Applying a dynamic...

In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that policy makers' choices concerning health spent at the local level are spatially correlated and electorally oriented. We check the influence of a set of demographic, electoral and economic determinants of public health activity. We performed a spatial...