Study title

The data set comprises of 14 years panel data on municipal revenues and expenditure outcomes, primarily the quality and quantity of locally funded public education infrastructure. The resulting paper considers a program that invests in the tax capacity of Brazilian municipalities to assess whether better tax infrastructure has an effect on public service provision relative to grants. It compares how municipalities allocate increases in funds from the tax capacity program to increases in funds from tax and transfer revenues from the central government. The main measure of public expenditure outcomes considered is municipal education infrastructure. This data is available in the annual school census conducted by the Ministry of Education. Other expenditure outcomes that complement the results on education in the data are health infrastructure and corruption. Corruption data is obtained from the random audits for corruption in Brazil by an independent audit agency. The data on municipal health units comes from a census of health facilities conducted in 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2009.CAGE will aim to build on initial success while offering some important innovations. The overarching theme will continue to be 'succeeding in the global economy' and the Centre will be organised into research themes each with an 'organizing question': Theme 1: What Explains Comparative Long-Run Growth Performance?; Theme 2: How do Culture and Institutions Help to Explain Development and Divergence in a Globalizing World?; Theme 3: How Can the Measurement of Wellbeing be Improved and What are the Implications for Policy?; Theme 4: What are the Implications of Globalization and Global Crises for Policymaking and for Economic and Political Outcomes in Western Democracies? During phase 1, research in Theme 1 made excellent progress in establishing a detailed quantitative picture of the dimensions of long-run economic growth over the last 800 years in Europe and Asia and the analysis will now be...