We use a large and unexplored dataset covering all mainland Portuguese municipalities from 1979 to 2002 to evaluate the impact of political forces in the allocation of grants from the central government to local authorities. Empirical results clearly show that, besides variables that proxi local...

Governments have an important role at defining the course of the economy. It is crucial, therefore, to understand their behaviour, their motivations and the factors underlying their policies, once the economy evolution can not be dissociated from the institutional and political background. This...

The paper examines the determinants of the assignment of EU funds to Portuguese municipalities using a large and unexplored dataset covering all (278) mainland municipalities over fifteen years. Empirical results reveal that besides normative objectives, the national government also takes into...

Although the literature on the political economy of public finance is already quite extensive, most articles analyse the behaviour of central governments. Furthermore, studies about the Portuguese economy are scarce. The present article contributes for a better understanding of these phenomena...

This paper is an empirical analysis of the likelihood of failure of inflation stabilization programs. Logit models are estimated on a dataset of 39 programs implemented in 10 countries since the late 1950s, in order to determine which economic and political variables affect the probability of...