This paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from Bolivia. Empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization. These changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need. Nationally, these changes were driven...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of economic openness on the vertical structure of the public sector within a country. To tackle this issue we set up a simple theoretical model of fiscal federalism, where both central and local public spending enter the objective functions of both a central government and an aggregate local public sector, accommodating a wide range of behaviou...

This paper examines the impact of the form of government—–presidential or parliamentary—–on fiscal outcomes in democratic systems. Based on data for democracies in 98 countries between 1970 and 2002, it shows that the gross domestic product ratio of the central government budget balance is higher in presidential than in parliamentary democracies. It also shows that this impact is not due to the...

T HE grant-in-aid is probably one of the most widely used and least understood activities or devices of government today. In the past 10 or 15 years, many studies have been undertaken and many volumes have been written about grants-inaid, and yet the nature of the grant, its place in our system of government, its purpose, and its effect are little understood-and are often seriously misunderstoo...

How have local governments in China been able to break through central policy restrictions in a unitary and authoritarian political system? Why is China’s official discourse in the reform era often so conservative and unfavorable to reform? The author argues the two issues are components of a signaling game between China’s central government and local officials, in which local officials know th...

This approach was in keeping with the thinking of the time. Central control of power and resources had enabled governments to pull their economies out of the Great Depression and later to wage the Second World War. The application of Keynesian principles, which give a large role to central government in managing the economy, resulted in spectacular economic gains in the 1950s and 1960s. Central...

In 1991 Indian government launched systematic economic reforms programme. The infrastructure industries such as telecommunications and electricity have subsequently been restructured and opened to private sector participation. Accompanied with the restructuring and privatisation has been setting up of independent regulatory agencies for telecommunications and electricity. While there is a singl...

This paper discusses central-local relations for healthcare policy in China from a principal-agent perspective, based on schistosomiasis control. In order to control the disease, the central government produced the Outline of the Mid-Long-Term National Plan for Schistosomiasis Prevention and Control (2004-2015) in 2004. By discussing the implementation of the National Outline at the provincial ...

This Special Report/Issue Brief examines the universe of state and local retirement plans. It describes how these plans have developed and continue to evolve in a number of areas, including plan features, regulatory framework, governance, and asset management. While these retirement programs differ in many respects from private-sector plans, the disparity in some areas has narrowed. This report...

WebAssign is a web-based system that supports written assignments in a virtual university. The system has been developed by the FernUniversität Hagen, the German distance teaching university, and successfully used by different faculties at our and other universities (cf. [1]). The development of WebAssign was partially supported by the federal government program MultiMedia (cf.: http://www.uvm-...