Despite sound policies and institutions, Danish productivity has grown modestly over the past decade, both historically and in relation to other countries, contributing to weak economic growth and an erosion in competitiveness. An examination of the four potential drivers of this puzzle, namely...

The main features of China’s current sub-national finance arrangements date back to the 1994 tax reform. China has a multi-level government structure that shares national tax revenues through a system of tax sharing and transfers, and divides spending assignments and responsibilities. Local...

Using panel data for OECD countries, this study investigates the extent to which changes in government spending on education, health and other areas influence long-term growth. The results suggest that, if total government spending is kept unchanged, increasing expenditure on health, education...

Mexico has achieved a high degree of decentralisation in public services, but the Mexican fiscal federal system has important shortcomings. States and municipalities have become heavily dependent on federal transfers to finance a growing share of public spending. This leaves the burden of...

Finnish municipalities enjoy ample fiscal autonomy and provide or arrange the provision of a large share of public services. In recent years, their spending and debt has been increasing steadily, especially because of population ageing and increases in the cost of health care and social...

Governments are created and run by humans, who can experience the same behavioural biases and barriers as individuals in society. Therefore, it makes sense to explore how behavioural insights (BI) can be applied to the governance of regulatory policy making, and not just to the design of...

Raising the effectiveness of Italy’s public sector is more urgent than ever. It will be key to revive investment and productivity and improve access to quality public services for the most vulnerable. The quality of public goods and services is variable, weakening Italy’s resilience to...

The world economy and societies are going through a digital transformation that goes well beyond computerisation and use of information and telecommunications technologies. This transformation is creating opportunities and challenges for all levels of government in the areas of tax and...

The Coronavirus pandemic has put extreme pressure on public health services, often delivered at the local and regional levels of government. The paper focuses on how countries made changes to the configuration of federalism during the first wave of the pandemic. These changes typically have...

This paper studies the potential drivers of governments’ approval rates in 18 Latin American countries using Internet search query data from Google Trends and traditional data sources. It employs monthly panel data between January 2006 and December 2015. The analysis tests several...