This paper investigates the role of political representation in explaining geographical variation in social security and income tax transfers. To quantify the causal link going from political representation to transfers, we identify two sets of exogenous changes in political representation and...

This paper investigates the role of political representation in explaining regional variation in fiscal transfers in Belgium. Using Eurostat data for the years 1995 to 2008, we find that on average per capita cash fiscal transfers –consisting of the net amount of federal income taxes and...

This paper investigates the role of political representation in explaining regional variation in fiscal transfers in Belgium. Using Eurostat data for the years 1995 to 2008, we find that on average per capita cash fiscal transfers – consisting of the net amount of federal income taxes and...

The political geography of central government debt has hardly been investigated. We propose a method for calculating implicit interregional transfers stemming from central government debt. We apply this method to Belgium over the 1970-2016 period. The share of poorer Francophone Belgium in...