Election goals and income redistribution: Recent evidence from Albania

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of political competition on block grants from federal to sub-federal levels of government. We model the extent and direction of income redistribution as determined proximately by the political agendas of central decision makers and, at a deeper level, by the institutions within which they "nd themselves operating. We contrast two political objective functions that yield di!erent empirical predictions of the ways in which politics should a!ect "scal policy. Lessons learned here may prove important in understanding limits on the types of redistribution possible via block grants, given the institutional framework, in both developing and developed countries.

Preventing Competition because of Solidarity: Rhetoric and Reality of Airport Investments in Spain

“…Empirical applications of this issue can be found, for example, in Worthington and Dollery (1998), Case (2001), Costa et al (2003) and Johansson (2003). Certainly, the efficiency-equity trade-off relationship in infrastructure policies is a basic and relevant story.…”

“…But it is not the sole story to be found in the regional allocation of 2 Another similar strand of literature but less related to our work is that focused on the political motivations with regard to grant allocations between different government levels. Empirical applications of this issue can be found, for example, in Worthington and Dollery (1998), Case (2001), Costa et al (2003) and Johansson (2003). Indeed, airport management in Spain is embodied with specific features that allow us to test a hypothesis about the behavior of government agents.…”

The effects of partisan alignment on the allocation of intergovernmental transfers. Differences-in-differences estimates for Spain

“…Most of the papers in the literature use the electoral margin of the party (i.e., vote share less 50%, in absolute value) at the last election as a proxy for φ j (Case, 2001, and Strömberg, 2001, Dasgupta et al 2004, andKehmani, 2003) 13 . However, the electoral margin may be a 12 For example, the correlation coefficient between the vote share of the socialist party (PSOE) at the General and Regional elections (using the data of the Regional election prior to the General one) at the provincial level is 0.92.…”

Intergovernmental transfers and re-election concerned politicians

“…Representative empirical investigations in support of the swing voters hypothesis include Case (2001), and Dahlberg and Johansson (2002) 4 tatives do so in an agency framework. Persson and Tabellini (2000) and Besley (2006) present an overview of many of the workhorse models used in this field.…”