Public sector activities are often neglected in the economic approaches used to analyze the driving forces behind urban growth. The institutional status of a regional capital is a crucial aspect of public sector activities. This paper reports on a quasi-natural experiment on county towns in East...

Public sector activities are often neglected in the economic approaches used to analyze the driving forces behind urban growth. The institutional status of a regional capital is a crucial aspect of public sector activities. This paper reports on a quasi-natural experiment on county towns in East...

Public sector activities are often neglected in economic approaches to analyze the driving forces of urban growth and changes in urban hierarchies. One crucial aspect of public sector activities is the institutional status of cities as regional capital. The paper is reporting on a quasi natural...

We use an instrumental-variables estimator reliant on variation in congressional representation to analyze the effects of federal aid to state and local governments across all four major pieces of COVID-19 response legislation. Through September 2021, we estimate that the federal government...

Whether competition improves governments' efficiency is an enduring question in Local Public Economics. Based on Tiebout's framework, recent research suggests this effect is operative for school districts: decentralization (greater district availability) may reduce expenditures without...

The sales tax is assumed to be regressive as those with higher incomes spend a smaller portion of their incomes. This conclusion is based on the presumption that the sales tax is a broad-based consumer tax and that consumers bear the burden of the tax. In practice, the tax is neither broad-based...

Tests for the presence of Leviathan, evidenced by a positive relationship between the size of government measured as a percentage of GDP, and the degree of fiscal centralization, have provided mixed results. We derive alternative measures of the size of government taking into account household...

We find strong evidence in the OECD country panel data to support the Knightian view that non-diversifiable economic risks shape the equilibrium entrepreneurship in an occupational choice model. Differential social insurance of entrepreneurial and labor risk is found to be statistically...

We find evidence in the OECD cross-country data to support the Knightian view that non-diversifiable economic risks shape equilibrium entrepreneurship in an occupational choice model. Differential social insurance of entrepreneurial and labor risk is found to be statistically significant and...