Though fiscal policies of central governments sometimes provide modest insurance against regional income shocks, this paper shows that pro-cyclical fiscal policy among provincial governments can easily overwhelm these stabilizing effects. We examine the cyclicality of budget items among provincial governments in eight federations, showing that own-source taxes are highly pro-cyclical and contra...

Like many trends that influence public policy and administration, ‘e-government’ is a multifaceted and nebulous idea, easily applied to a range of different situations, across the entire gamut of government and society, and with differing intentions. There are wideranging claims made for e-government, considerable hopes pinned on it, and substantial commitments – financial and otherwise – made ...

57 National Tax Journal Vol. LIV, No. 1 Abstract This paper tests whether state and local fiscal policy depended on the number of seats in the legislature in the first half of the 20th century. We find that large legislatures spent more, as implied by the “Law of 1/n” from the fiscal commons/logrolling literature. The same relation appears in the latter half of the century, and therefore seems ...

Fiscal policy is a policy that tries to achieve certain economic goals through instruments such as changes in government expenditure and taxation. The financial policy uses two instruments of government revenue (tax) and government spending (spending) to influence the economy. And in the economic literature, they consider economic growth to be equal to GDP. The impact of financial policies on e...

I study how the general and specific details of a micro founded monetary framework affect the determination of policy when the government has limited commitment. The conduct of policy depends on the interaction between the incentive to smooth distortions intertemporally and a time-consistency problem. In equilibrium, fiscal and monetary policies are distortionary, but long-run policy is not aff...

The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health brought the reduction of avoidable health inequalities between social groups to the centre of the political stage. Its three key recommendations—to improve daily living conditions; to tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources; and to measure and understand the problem—have been widely welcomed. As the commission itself...

There exists a disconnection between evolving policies in the policy arenas of mental health, housing, and income support in Canada. One of the complexities associated with analysing the intersection of these policies is that federal, provincial, and municipal level policies are involved. Canada is one of the few developed countries without a national mental health policy and because of the fed...

Control on regional government budgets is important in a monetary union as lower tiers of government have fewer incentives to consolidate debt. According to the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level; unsustainable non-Ricardian fiscal policies eventually force monetary policy to adjust. Hence, uncoordinated and non-regulated regional fiscal policies would therefore threaten price stability for the m...

Subnational governments play a key role responding to climate change risks in terms of policy strategies and instruments. This article analyzes how Brazilian municipal and state governments have developed and implemented public policies to mitigate and to adapt to climate change risks. We surveyed all cities’ and states’ climate policies within the country. The methodological approach includes ...