Is There a Fiscal Resource Curse? Resource Rents, Fiscal Capacity and Political Institutions

Political Economy of Fiscal Institutions

We discuss two essential problems of the political economy of public finances: The principal agent problem between voters and elected politicians and the common pool problem arising from the fact that money drawn from a general tax fund is used to pay for policies targeting more or less narrow groups in society. Three institutional mechanisms exist to deal with these problems, ex-ante rules con...

On the Merits of the Resource Curse Theory: Resource Rents and Corruption

Fiscal Institutions for a Currency Union

Fiscal Regime Uncertainty, Risk Aversion, and Exhaustible Resource Depletion

How d s u n c e r t a i n t y a b o u t f u t u r e r e n t t a x l i a b i l i t y a f f e c t t h e compe t i t i ve supply p a t t e r n f o r an e x h a u s t i b l e resource? H i s t o r i c a l l y , changes i n t a x and r e g u l a t o r y c l a u s e s h a v e b e e n a f r e q u e n t occurrence i n t h e Petroleum indus t ry , and appear t o h a v e c o n t r i b u t e d t o t h e c...

Fiscal Decentralization: A Political Economy Perspective

This paper surveys recent contributions to the study of fiscal decentralization which adopt a political economy approach. It is argued that this approach can capture, in a variety of formal models, the plausible and influential ideas (increasingly, supported by empirical evidence) that fiscal decentralization can lead to improved preference-matching and accountability of government. In particul...