Currently there is a propensity that decentralized hierarchy is adopted by organizations. Vast realms of research endeavor have been committed to understand the advantages and setbacks of decentralized organizations, and their results indicate that inadequate decentralization will constrain the creativity of employees while over decentralization may push the company towards chaos. However, litt...

The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship, and it has remained virtually unexamined by empiricists. In this paper, we make a first attempt at examining this issue empiric...

Using a panel of international student test scores, 1980 – 2000, panel fixed effects estimates suggest that government spending decentralization is conducive to student performance. The effect does not appear to be mediated through levels of, or decentralization in, educational spending. JEL codes: C33; H2; I2, H40

This paper revisits the influential “Leviathan” hypothesis, which posits that tax competition limits the growth of government spending in decentralized countries. It uses panel data to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization over time within countries, attempting to distinguish between decentralization that is funded by intergovernmental transfers and local taxation. First, it sets out a ...

The conventional wisdom is that government decentralization promotes policy innovation because it allows for several simultaneous experiments by local governments. However, this ignores a learning externality: successful policy experiments provide useful information for all governments. Local governments will ignore this externality, but a central government should take it into account. This pa...

Public service motivation (PSM), public values (PSV), and ethos (PSE), we argue, constitute theoretically complementary dimensions of psychology. Using multi-dimensional scaling (MDS), also empirically map the three constructs to identify their interrelationships as constituent parts a topology. survey private employees, determined which PSM, PSV, PSE instruments most strongly correlate with (1...

Aaron Schneider is a political scientist at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. His research interests include comparative politics, public finance, and methodology. His current research projects include studies of federalism, decentralization, party systems, budgeting, and taxation. He has conducted research in Brazil and India, and plans to apply the measures der...

The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship, and it has remained virtually unexamined by empiricists. In this paper, we make a first attempt at examining this issue empiric...

BACKGROUND In India, the process of decentralization of health services started taking shape in the mid-1990s. Systemic reforms envisaged delegation of administrative and financial responsibilities at district level for management of health-care institutions in 23 states of India in 1999. Subsequently, some of these reforms became part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) launched in 200...