Decentralization and political institutions

Decentralization and Political Institutions

Does fiscal decentralization lead to more efficient governance, better public goods, and higher economic growth? This paper tests hypotheses of the theoretical literature that results of decentralization depend on features of political institutions. Using data from up to 95 countries for 25 years we show that the effect of fiscal decentralization strongly depends on two aspects of political cen...

Political institutions and income inequality: The case of decentralization

Political Decentralization

I provide a critical overview of the literature on political decentralization. After reviewing firstand second-generation theories of federalism, I describe recent empirical studies focusing mainly on determinants of capture and local government accountability emphasized by second-generation theories. The article concludes by describing emerging new issues that deserve more attention in future ...

Decentralization, Political Competition and Corruption∗

We study the effect of decentralization on corruption in a political agency model from the perspective of a region. In a model where corruption opportunities are lower under centralization at each period of time, decentralization makes easier for citizens to detect corrupt incumbents. As a consequence, the relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption is conditional on political c...

Happiness and Political Institutions

The study of individual happiness has enriched economics with many new and sometimes challenging (preliminary) insights.1 More and more often, it is asked about the policy consequences that are to be derived from these insights. We observe that economic research on happiness has an explicit or implicit tendency to follow a “benevolent dictator” approach where the government, and individual poli...