The aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by the different components of human capital in the wage determination of recent immigrants within the Spanish labour market. Using microdata from the Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes 2007, the paper examines returns to human capital of immigrants, distinguishing between...

The aim of this paper is to analyze whether Spanish municipalities adjust in response to budget shocks and (if so) which elements of the budget they are more likely to adjust. The methodology we use to answer these questions is a vector error- correction model (VECM), estimated with data from...

It is widely recognized that market failure prevents efficient risk sharing in natural disaster insurance, leading to several public-private partnership arrangements across the globe. We argue that risk selection, a situation where the public partner insures the majority of high risk agents, is potentially an important issue. To illustrate our...

This paper analyzes the impact of fiscal equalization on asymmetric tax competition when positive agglomeration externalities are present. It shows that equalization of standardized tax revenue improves the spatial allocation of capital provided that agglomeration externalities are sufficiently strong.

This paper discusses the methodology for the calculation of federal fiscal flows in a federation and the measurement of interregional redistribution. It identifies five major steps: (a) the selection of the approach for calculating federal fiscal flows, (b) the allocation of federal revenues and expenditures among regions, (c) the choice...

Why do some federations implement highly progressive intergovernmental transfer schemes while others do not? First, this essay establishes some stylized facts, using provincial-level data from nine federations to measure the extent of inter-regional redistribution achieved through intergovernmental transfers in each country. Second, it explores sources of institutional variation that might...