The large and persistent deficits observed in many countries and the reform efforts undertaken to strengthen fiscal discipline have been the focus of an active and ongoing research program in political economy. This book draws together contributions from two competing approaches seeking to...

We discuss two essential problems of the political economy of public finances: The principal agent problem between voters and elected politicians and the common pool problem arising from the fact that money drawn from a general tax fund is used to pay for policies targeting more or less narrow...