This paper provides a tractable theoretical model designed to capture the targeting incentives created by benchmark testing. Under high-stakes benchmark testing, schools and teachers are judged on the fraction of students that meet some given level of educational attainment. The incentive for...

Tax amnesty programs have exploded in popularity among cash-strapped states since the beginning of the Great Recession. Though many scholars have been interested in the long-term tax compliance effects after amnesty programs, this article is the first to consider short-run compliance effects...

A mainstream motivation for decentralized government is to enable public service investments to better align with political preferences that may differ by geographical region. This paper examines how political preferences determine local government provision of hospital services. We find that...