IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v99y2008i1p147-151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On decentralization and life satisfaction

Author

Listed:
  • Bjørnskov, Christian
  • Drehe, Axel
  • Fischer, Justina A.V.

Abstract

We empirically analyze the impact of fiscal and political decentralization on subjective well-being in a cross-section of 60,000 individuals from 66 countries. More spending or revenue decentralization raises well-being while greater local autonomy is beneficial only via government consumption spending.

Suggested Citation

  • Bjørnskov, Christian & Drehe, Axel & Fischer, Justina A.V., 2008. "On decentralization and life satisfaction," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 147-151, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:99:y:2008:i:1:p:147-151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(07)00241-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    2. Kotsogiannis, Christos & Schwager, Robert, 2006. "On the incentives to experiment in federations," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 484-497, November.
    3. Christian Bjørnskov & Axel Dreher & Justina Fischer, 2007. "The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satisfaction around the world," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 267-292, March.
    4. Prud'homme, Remy, 1995. "The Dangers of Decentralization," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 10(2), pages 201-220, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Axel Dreher, 2006. "Power to the People? The Impact of Decentralization on Governance," KOF Working papers 06-121, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    2. Federico Boffa & Amedeo Piolatto & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, 2016. "Political Centralization and Government Accountability," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(1), pages 381-422.
    3. Amihai Glazer & Hiroki Kondo, 2007. "Innovation and Imitation Across Jurisdictions," Working Papers 070807, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    4. Rincke, Johannes, 2007. "Policy diffusion in space and time: The case of charter schools in California school districts," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 526-541, September.
    5. Johannes Rincke, 2006. "Policy innovation in local jurisdictions: Testing for neighborhood influence in school choice policies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 189-200, October.
    6. Luis Ayala & Ana Herrero & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2019. "Welfare Benefits in Highly Decentralized Fiscal Systems: Evidence on Interterritorial Mimicking," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1905, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    7. Johannes Becker & Ronald B. Davies, 2015. "Learning to Tax ?- Interjurisdictional Tax Competition under Incomplete Information," Working Papers 201519, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    8. Zohal Hessami, 2010. "The Size and Composition of Government Spending in Europe and Its Impact on Well‐Being," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 346-382, August.
    9. Alberto Porto & Natalia Porto, 2000. "Fiscal Decentralization and Voters' Choices as Control," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 3, pages 135-167, May.
    10. Andreas Wagener, 2013. "Tax Competition, Relative Performance, And Policy Imitation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1251-1264, November.
    11. Federico Boffa & Amedeo Piolatto & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, 2011. "Political centralization and government accountability," Economics Working Papers 1335, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2015.
    12. Sandy Fréret & Denis Maguain, 2017. "The effects of agglomeration on tax competition: evidence from a two-regime spatial panel model on French data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(6), pages 1100-1140, December.
    13. Gijs Roelofs & Daniel Vuuren, 2017. "The Decentralization of Social Assistance and the Rise of Disability Insurance Enrolment," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-21, March.
    14. Kristien Werck & Bruno Heyndels & Benny Geys, 2008. "The impact of ‘central places’ on spatial spending patterns: evidence from Flemish local government cultural expenditures," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(1), pages 35-58, March.
    15. Padovano, Fabio & Petrarca, Ilaria, 2014. "Are the responsibility and yardstick competition hypotheses mutually consistent?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 459-477.
    16. Pablo Sanguinetti & Martin Besfamille, 2004. "Exerting local tax effort or lobbying for central transfers?: Evidence from Argentina," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 249, Econometric Society.
    17. Matthieu Leprince & Sonia Paty & Emmanuelle Reulier, 2005. "Choix d'imposition et interactions spatiales entre collectivités locales. Un test sur les départements français," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 71(1), pages 67-93.
    18. Alexander Klemm & Stefan Parys, 2012. "Empirical evidence on the effects of tax incentives," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(3), pages 393-423, June.
    19. Edoardo Di Porto & Vincent Merlin & Sonia Paty, 2013. "Cooperation among local governments to deliver public services : a "structural" bivariate response model with fixed effects and endogenous covariate," Working Papers halshs-00787600, HAL.
    20. Thushyanthan Baskaran & Sonia Bhalotra & Brian Min & Yogesh Uppal, 2018. "Women legislators and economic performance," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-47, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:99:y:2008:i:1:p:147-151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.