Previous literature widely assumes that taxes are optimized in local public finance while expenditures adjust residually. This paper endogenizes the choice of the optimization variable. In particular, it analyzes how federal policy toward local governments influences the way local governments...

This paper proposes an approach to measure efficiency of a set of units operating in an administrative public service, namely real estate cadastral offices, which have not been analysed previously. This study has been made possible thanks to the database provided by the Directorate General of...

This paper examines the impact of urban sprawl, a phenomenon of particular interest in Spain, which is currently experiencing this process of rapid, low-density urban expansion. Many adverse consequences are attributed to urban sprawl (e.g., traffic congestion, air pollution and social...

En este trabajo se cuantifica la importancia relativa de las necesidades de gasto y de la capacidad fiscal como factores explicativos de la desigualdad observada en los niveles de gasto p£blico local por habitante con datos de los municipios de la provincia de Barcelona con m s de 5.000...

This study compares the representativeness of voters in the proportional electoral system with the situation under plurality rule. Representativeness is commonly measured by comparing parties’ received votes with their shares of seats in the Parliament; this implies that proportional rule...

Urban sprawl has recently become a matter of concern throughout Europe, but it is in southern countries where its environmental and economic impact has been most severe. This low-density, spatially expansive urban development pattern can have a highly marked impact on municipal budgets. Thus,...

This paper analyses the main determinants of a central government’s decision to use grants to bail out regional governments (i.e., the determinants of additional grants assigned by a central government to regions due to an increase in their issue of debt). The estimated grant equation is...

We use data for all Italian municipalities, from 2001-2006, to empirically test the extent to which two electoral rules, which hold, for small and large municipalities, affect fiscal policy decisions. Municipalities with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants elect their mayors in accordance with a...

In a decentralised tax system, the effects of tax policies enacted by one government are not confined to its own jurisdiction. First, if the tax base is mobile, tax rate increases by one regional government will raise the amount of taxes collected by other regional governments (horizontal tax...

Concurrent taxation is a feature of many federal systems. As a result, the tax policy of one level of government affects the tax base of the other. A way to check the empirical relevance of this hypothesis is to test for the existence of interdependencies in the tax setting behaviour of various...