We use data about the Italian Constitutional Court (1956-2005) to verify an implication of the “revisionist” explanations of judicial independence with respect to judicial appointments, namely that elected politicians reward more independent justices with appointments after the Court tenure....

We analyze the selection of the Justice Reporter by the Justice President of the Italian Constitutional Court, the most important form of agenda setting power and act of delegation in decisions of constitutional (il)legitimacy. We estimate a series of econometric models that evaluate the...

This paper examines the strategic interactions among the central and a subcentral government where incomplete information forces both to form expectations about the other’s behaviour, especially the probability that the central government will bail out the local one. Various determinants and...

The present study aims to test Meltzer and Richard’s (1981) hypothesis that lower-income individuals vote for candidates who favor higher taxes and more redistribution. Assuming that left-wing parties advocate a general increase in taxation, we estimate a vote function for the French Cantonal...

This paper analyses intergovernmental transfers in France and Italy to assess to which extent soft budget spending behaviors result from slack in fiscal constraints or from political factors. It innovates on the previous literature, which concentrated on single countries, by adopting a...