Periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable. From this perspective term limits, which restrict voters’ ability to reward politicians with re-election, appear counterproductive. We show that despite the disciplining effect of elections, term limits can be ex ante welfare improving from the perspective of voters. By reducing the value of holdin...

From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the …scal vertical imbalance is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to a reduction in the extent of redistributive …scal policies if the maximal tolerable size of government has been reached. To test for this empirically we use some high quality data, from the LIS dataset, on individ...

Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even...

We model alternative institutional arrangements for building and managing facilities for provision of public services, including the use of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), by exploring the effects on innovative investment activity by providers. The desirability of bundling the building and management operations is analyzed, and it is considered whether it is optimal to allocate ownership ...

The regional voting pattern of the Swedish EU-membership referendum is analyzed to determine voters’ preferences over two fiscal regimes: an autonomous Sweden, or Sweden as part of the EU. A major difference between these regimes is that autonomy gives greater national discretion to handle risk-sharing and redistribution between regions. I find that inhabitants of rich and stable regions, with ...

The Size of the Shadow Economies of 145 Countries all over the World: First Results over the Period 1999 to 2003 Using the DYMIMIC approach, estimates of the shadow economy in 145 developing, transition, developed OECD countries, South Pacific islands and still communist countries are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) over 2002/2003 in developing cou...

The influence of Eu3+ on the upconversion (UC) fluorescence of Er3+ in Y2O3:Er, Yb3+ nanocrystals was investigated. Room-temperature UC spectra show that the intensity ratio of red to green lights was increased from 8.6 to 19.3 with 1.0 mol% Eu3+ doping. Additionally, with the increase of Eu3+ ion concentration, the n values for both green and red UC emissions in Y2O3:Er, Yb3+ nanocrystals beco...

This paper presents a model in which voters attempt to balance the ideological positions of their Senate representatives. Candidate positions are determined endogenously through a primary system. The median voter theorem is applied in each election to determine winning platforms based on voter preferences which may differ from their individual bliss points. Contrary to the original median voter...

Heavily subsidizing essential health products through existing health infrastructure could substantially improve health in sub-Saharan Africa. There is, however, widespread concern that poor governance – in particular, limited health worker accountability – seriously undermines the effectiveness of subsidy programs. Using innovative audits of targeted bed net distribution programs in Ghana, Ken...

Globalization and growth-maximizing governments may cause countries to converge towards a similar composition of government expenditures. These convergent forces may be even more intensive in the case of EU Member States engaged in the European integration process. The results obtained, through calculation of a constructed dissimilarity index and by adapting the usual indicators of convergence ...