This paper examines the fiscal and extra-fiscal effects of decentralizing the collection of Brazil’s rural land tax from the federal level to local governments, thereby empirically testing decentralization theory. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we assess the impact of local tax enforcement on revenue, land use, and environmental outcomes. Decentralization led to sustained revenue gains, increased agricultural production, expanded reported environmental protection areas, and a slight decrease in land concentration. Our findings highlight the role of property taxation as a policy instrument for environmental conservation and sustainable development.

We examine how the fiscal equalization system influence the fiscal reactions of Swiss cantonal governments from 2008 to 2020. Using the common correlated effects mean group estimator, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio in the previous year correlates with a 0.1 to 0.2 percentage point increase in the total primary surplus-to-GDP ratio in the current year. Excluding resource equalization payments from the primary surplus measure weakens the fiscal adjustment by 40 percent, however. A sample split between constant net contributing and recipient cantons shows that the fiscal response of recipient cantons depends on the transfers. Our results indicate that equalization transfers affect cantonal fiscal responsiveness to debt and highlight the importance of designing equalization frameworks that balance equitable distribution with incentives for fiscal prudence at the sub-federal level.

In many organizations, agents operate on a fixed budget and allocate funds across sub-periods of the fiscal year. Commonly, unspent budget must be returned to the principal at year-end to prevent policy drifts. However, this savings constraint may induce inefficient spending patterns, such as expenditure surges before the budget expires. This study characterizes optimal budget rollover policy in a model which captures this trade-off. Applying it to Swiss federal consulting spending, I show that substantial welfare gains are possible by allowing agencies to retain one third of unspent funds. I verify the model's predictions exploiting a staggered reform liberalizing rollover.

In recent decades, the global trend has been moving toward the adoption of accrual accounting in the public sector. However, quantitative analysis regarding its fiscal effects is still in its infancy. Thus, this study examines the impact of accrual accounting on municipally controlled enterprises, with specific focus on the Japanese municipal sewage system. For this purpose, it employs a combination of instrumental variables as well as stochastic frontier analysis to quantitatively determine the fiscal effects from the perspective of cost efficiency. Based on the results, the transition from cash- to accrual-based accounting has led to improvements in overall cost efficiency. These findings also provide new quantitative evidence for future discussions on fiscal discipline, which is a key area in the field of public economics.