The fiscal decentralization impulse now sweeping the world often leads to partial decentralization, where subnational governments are funded by central transfers, rather than leading to full local autonomy. Despite the practical important of this arrangement, the literature contains no economic analysis of a partial decentralization regime in a Tiebout-style model. This paper provides such an a...

At national level in England and Wales, infant mortality rates fell rapidly from the early 1970s and into the 1980s. Subnational areas have also experienced a reduction in levels of infant mortality. While rates continued to fall to 2006, the rate of reduction has slowed. Although the Government Office Regions Yorkshire and The Humber, the North West and the West Midlands and the Office for Nat...

Sugar-sweetened beverages are widely believed to be contributing to the growing prevalence of overweight and obesity around the world. One of the channels used by industry to encourage greater consumption and preferences for soft drinks is schools. But governments around the world are taking action to limit the availability of soft drinks in schools. More than 30 national and subnational govern...

A small but growing literature has been concerned about the economic (and environmental) vulnerability on the level of countries. Less attention is paid to the economic vulnerability of different regions within countries. By focusing on the vulnerability of subnational regions, our paper contributes to the small literature on the ‘vulnerability of place’. We see the vulnerability of place as be...

BACKGROUND Recent assessments show continued decline in child mortality in Papua New Guinea (PNG), yet complete subnational analyses remain rare. This study aims to estimate under-five mortality in PNG at national and subnational levels to examine the importance of geographical inequities in health outcomes and track progress towards Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4. METHODOLOGY We perform...

Parental divorce is known to be associated with poor child health in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the great diversity in social and cultural practices, including marital ones, across the subcontinent likely yields substantial variation in the prevalence of divorce, which in turn could moderate its consequences for children. In this paper, we use Demographic and Health Survey data from 31 Africa...

The age group composition of populations varies substantially across continents and within countries, and is linked to levels of development, health status and poverty. The subnational variability in the shape of the population pyramid as well as the respective dependency ratio are reflective of the different levels of development of a country and are drivers for a country's economic prospects ...

National governments have intensified their attempts to create international institutions in various policy fields such as the environment, finance and trade. At the same time, many subnational policy makers have begun to duplicate international efforts by setting their own, stricter policies while others remain inactive or enact more lax regulation. This ‘glocalization’ of policy creates a com...

Far too much of the concern with subnational groups, either long established (and even indigenous) or recently immigrated, is with abstract principles of justice. Far too little of it is aboutmaking societies work at all well to give prosperity to everyone and to do so through democratic procedures. Many of the ostensible principles of justice erect barriers between various groups, minority and...