Do citizens engage in comparative performance evaluation across local governments? And if they do, how can we disentangle this behavior from other forms of strategic interactions among local governments or simple spatial correlation across neighboring jurisdictions? We use spatial econometrics...

Politicians are disciplined through the electoral system. But this is often not enough to eliminate political rents. Economists suggest that competition across governments may also help. But intergovernmental competition can take two forms, through tax competition (exit) or yardstick competition...

Should a subset of member states of a federation be allowed to form a sub-union on some policy issue? When centralization is not politically feasible, allowing an enhanced cooperation agreement among a subset of countries permits the latter to gain benefits which would otherwise be lost....

We study lobbying behavior by firms in a two-region economy, with either centralized or decentralized provision of profit-enhancing local public goods. Firms compete either in the market, lobbying for public good provision once entered in a market, or for the market, lobbying to gain ccess to...

We employ bootstrap methods (Efron (1979)) to test the effect of an important electoral reform implemented in Italy from 1993 to 2001, that moved the system for electing the Par-liament from purely proportional to plurality rule (for 75% of the seats). We do not find any effect on either the...

In a career-concern model of politics with endogenous candidacy and different types of politicians, following a decentralization reform, politicians with different skills are elected in municipalities characterized by different levels of autonomous resources. As an effect, consumer welfare...

Las metrópolis, amplias zonas densamente pobladas en las que variados entes territoriales gravitan sobre un núcleo metropolitano, son reconocidas como las formas territoriales dominantes al comando de la economía global y, sin embargo, no gozan de reconocimiento político. Los niveles...

<i> Gli effetti dell'Unione Europea sulla specializzazione e la competitività regionale </i> (di Vittorio Ferrero e Santino Piazza) - ABSTRACT: Il lavoro analizza l’effetto della progressiva integrazione economico-monetaria a livello europeo sul commercio estero delle regioni italiane. L’analisi...