Santiago Lago-Peña
Biographic Data
| ID | 336134 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Santiago Lago-Peña |
| GIVEN NAMES | Santiago |
| FAMILY NAME | Lago-Peña |
| SIGNATURE | LAGO-PEÑA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidade de Vigo |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4601-8655 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 93 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Understanding citizens’ knowledge and preferences for fiscal equalization in decentralized countries
The registered version of this article, first published in Regional & Federal Studies, is available online at the publisher's website: Taylor and Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2025.2551599
Decentralisation and the governance of extreme events
Uneven value capture in Spain
The Size of Countries and the Nationalization of Politics
Autogobierno y modernización de Galicia durante las cuatro últimas décadas
Las cuatro décadas de autogobierno de Galicia (1980-2020) han sido un éxito. El tamaño de su economía se ha duplicado y la renta por habitante ha progresado notablemente, gracias a un profundo cambio estructural, que incluye una fuerte desagrarización y elevadas ganancias de productividad. En paralelo, España se democratizó, se descentralizó, entró en la Unión Europea y construyó un homologable estado del bienestar. En síntesis, los cambios han f…
Rural Decline and Spatial Voting Patterns
How does rural decline affect electoral politics? A well-known argument is that the growing geographical polarisation of populations between prospering major cities and declining hinterlands is emerging as a cleavage of electoral politics in developed countries. But prior work has focussed on specific outcomes of rural decline rather than examining whether the geographical distribution of political attitudes and behaviours within countries has be…
Influencia de los resultados económicos sobre el apoyo electoral de los gobiernos autonómicos, 1980-1997
Este artículo estudia la validez de la incumbency-oriented hypothesis en las ComunidadesAutónomas españolas. Los resultados de nuestro análisis sugieren que los factores políticos resultanmás relevantes que la evolución de las variables económicas y presupuestarias en la explicacióny predicción del apoyo electoral de los partidos en el gobierno
Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision
The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of …
Work group diversity in professional football
Objective Although there is a huge literature examining how diversity affects group performance, an important limitation is the lack of evidence at the employee level. This article tries to fill this gap. We focus on professional football given the high ethnic diversity of football squads, the nonexistence of language barriers to hire players, and the granularity of data. Methods Relying on data from 1528 professional footballers joining a new cl…
Extreme events and the resilience of decentralised governance
Extreme events, such as economic crises, natural disasters or military conflicts, can affect the balance between centralisation and decentralisation forces across countries and transform, temporarily or more permanently, the design of multilevel governance. Using a panel of 91 developing and developed countries from 1960 to 2018, and another for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between 1995 and 2018, we exam…
Do Political Factors Affect Fiscal Consolidation? Evidence From Spanish Regional Governments
This paper empirically examines the political factors behind the different fiscal consolidation paths across Spanish regions over the period 2004 to 2017. Spanish regions provide an interesting case study due to both the strong fiscal decentralization and the deep impact of the so-called “Great Recession” on subcentral budget constraints in Spain. The estimates confirm that governments react to fiscal imbalances by reducing expenditure growth, bu…
Putting land to work
Agricultural land abandonment is a relevant occurrence in mountainous and peripheral regions all over the world. While both positive and negative environmental consequences of this abandonment are documented (depending on the specific location and scale), in rural areas it is always linked to a reduction in production and income. To address some of these problems, the several administrative layers within the European Union (EU) have put in place …
Waiting or Acting? The Gender Gap in International Football Success
The conditions under which women's national football teams do better or worse in international tournaments remains an open question. Using data from 116 countries worldwide, we have examined three arguments accounting for the gender gap in international football success, focusing on positive externalities from economic development and women's empowerment, and the active policies promoting women's football. Our findings show that the international…
Decentralization after the Great Recession
The general question addressed in this special issue of Regional Studies is whether the Great Recession of 2008 affected the political consensus about decentralization and the conventional wisdom about its impact on economic, political and social outcomes. The present introduction emphasizes the two main lines of enquiry that cut across all the papers in this issue. First, the effects of the Great Recession on the relations between national and s…
Fiscal policy in former Yugoslavian countries (2001–2014)
The aim of this paper is to analyse fiscal policy in former Yugoslavian countries over the period 2001–2014. The contribution of the paper is threefold; first, we build a homogeneous database to describe the evolution of the main fiscal aggregates in each country using an identical analytical structure. Second, we analyse the composition of national tax revenues to determine whether common patterns are still present, or if they have evolved in di…
Decentralization and Football
Objectives We show that decentralization of economic and political power makes a substantial difference in football. Decentralization increases the competitive balance of domestic football leagues and creates an advantage for clubs from decentralized countries in international competitions. Methods We run pooled cross‐sectional time‐series analyses using data from 35 European countries over the period 1950–2010 and logistic regressions with data …
Fiscal stability during the Great Recession
This paper provides an empirical analysis aimed at disentangling the roles played by decentralization level and design as well as the extended decentralized framework provided by subnational borrowing rules and fiscal responsibility laws on a country’s fiscal stability. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ data from the period 1995–2014, strong regularities are found regarding the effects of decentralizat…
Who Honours the Rules of Federalism? Party System Nationalisation and Fiscal Performance
This article explores the impact of decentralisation on countries’ fiscal outcomes paying attention to one aspect usually neglected in the literature: the relevance of local politics, proxied by party system nationalisation. Based on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1970–2011, our findings are threefold. First, both fiscal and political decentralisations have a virtuous effect on fiscal performance, improving ge…
The Impact of Fiscal Decentralization
In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and updated review of the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economy, society and politics. Our first target is the examination of two crucial and yet unsolved issues in the empirical literature on decentralization: the proper measurement of decentralization itself and its potential endogeneity in econometric estimates. Then, we discuss the main existing findings on the effects of decentralization on …
Spanish fiscal decentralization
Both fiscal and political decentralization have been a worldwide trend in recent decades. Spain is probably the best example of this evolution, insofar as it became one of the most decentralized countries in the world in just over three decades, departing for a highly centralized institutional framework. This paper aims to conduct a detailed analysis of this process, focusing on the fiscal aspects. While we show the successful aspects, we also po…
Democracy and Football
Objectives \nThis article relies on data from two samples of 47 and 49 European countries from 1950 through 2011 and 1,980 and 1,960 football domestic leagues, respectively, to explore to what extent political regimes affect the competitive balance in domestic football (soccer) leagues. \n \nMethods \nWe run OLS cross-sectional regressions comparing democracies and nondemocracies and pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses conducted on the 13…
An economic explanation of the nationalization of electoral politics
Can the periphery achieve core? The case of the automobile components industry in Spain
On the Political Determinants of Intergovernmental Grants in Decentralized Countries
This article examines the effect of political variables on the gains obtained by Spanish regions in periodical bargaining of the intergovernmental financing agreements and on the regional distribution of discretional earmarked grants. First, we find that the relationship between gains in transferred revenues and on regional public debt stocks depends on the period and the specific issues discussed in the corresponding negotiation. Second, we show…
Budget Transparency in Local Governments
The aim of this paper is to shed additional light on the determinants of budget transparency in local governments. Our work is based on a Likert-type survey questionnaire specifically designed to measure budget transparency in small municipalities. The questionnaire is based on the IMF's revised Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency (2007). Results from 33 Galician municipalities are used to assess its internal consistency and to test a b…
Budget Transparency in Local Governments
The aim of this paper is to shed additional light on the determinants of budget transparency in local governments. Our work is based on a Likert-type survey questionnaire specifically designed to measure budget transparency in small municipalities. The questionnaire is based on the IMF's revised Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency (2007). Results from 33 Galician municipalities are used to assess its internal consistency and to test a b…
On the Political Determinants of Intergovernmental Grants in Decentralized Countries
This article examines the effect of political variables on the gains obtained by Spanish regions in periodical bargaining of the intergovernmental financing agreements and on the regional distribution of discretional earmarked grants. First, we find that the relationship between gains in transferred revenues and on regional public debt stocks depends on the period and the specific issues discussed in the corresponding negotiation. Second, we show…
An economic explanation of the nationalization of electoral politics
Fiscal stability during the Great Recession
This paper provides an empirical analysis aimed at disentangling the roles played by decentralization level and design as well as the extended decentralized framework provided by subnational borrowing rules and fiscal responsibility laws on a country’s fiscal stability. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ data from the period 1995–2014, strong regularities are found regarding the effects of decentralizat…
Rural Decline and Spatial Voting Patterns
How does rural decline affect electoral politics? A well-known argument is that the growing geographical polarisation of populations between prospering major cities and declining hinterlands is emerging as a cleavage of electoral politics in developed countries. But prior work has focussed on specific outcomes of rural decline rather than examining whether the geographical distribution of political attitudes and behaviours within countries has be…
Extreme events and the resilience of decentralised governance
Extreme events, such as economic crises, natural disasters or military conflicts, can affect the balance between centralisation and decentralisation forces across countries and transform, temporarily or more permanently, the design of multilevel governance. Using a panel of 91 developing and developed countries from 1960 to 2018, and another for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between 1995 and 2018, we exam…
Decentralization after the Great Recession
The general question addressed in this special issue of Regional Studies is whether the Great Recession of 2008 affected the political consensus about decentralization and the conventional wisdom about its impact on economic, political and social outcomes. The present introduction emphasizes the two main lines of enquiry that cut across all the papers in this issue. First, the effects of the Great Recession on the relations between national and s…
Putting land to work
Agricultural land abandonment is a relevant occurrence in mountainous and peripheral regions all over the world. While both positive and negative environmental consequences of this abandonment are documented (depending on the specific location and scale), in rural areas it is always linked to a reduction in production and income. To address some of these problems, the several administrative layers within the European Union (EU) have put in place …
Spanish fiscal decentralization
Both fiscal and political decentralization have been a worldwide trend in recent decades. Spain is probably the best example of this evolution, insofar as it became one of the most decentralized countries in the world in just over three decades, departing for a highly centralized institutional framework. This paper aims to conduct a detailed analysis of this process, focusing on the fiscal aspects. While we show the successful aspects, we also po…
Can the periphery achieve core? The case of the automobile components industry in Spain
Descentralización y voto económico en España
En este artículo se analiza el voto económico en contextos descentralizados.La existencia de varias arenas de competición política abre lapuerta a los procesos de contaminación electoral vertical, lo que implicaque los electores no juzguen de forma independiente la actuación degobiernos nacionales y regionales. Con datos para España en el período1982-2008, se comprueba que la contaminación electoral tiene lugardesde la arena nacional a la regiona…
Work group diversity in professional football
Objective Although there is a huge literature examining how diversity affects group performance, an important limitation is the lack of evidence at the employee level. This article tries to fill this gap. We focus on professional football given the high ethnic diversity of football squads, the nonexistence of language barriers to hire players, and the granularity of data. Methods Relying on data from 1528 professional footballers joining a new cl…
Waiting or Acting? The Gender Gap in International Football Success
The conditions under which women's national football teams do better or worse in international tournaments remains an open question. Using data from 116 countries worldwide, we have examined three arguments accounting for the gender gap in international football success, focusing on positive externalities from economic development and women's empowerment, and the active policies promoting women's football. Our findings show that the international…
Decentralization and Football
Objectives We show that decentralization of economic and political power makes a substantial difference in football. Decentralization increases the competitive balance of domestic football leagues and creates an advantage for clubs from decentralized countries in international competitions. Methods We run pooled cross‐sectional time‐series analyses using data from 35 European countries over the period 1950–2010 and logistic regressions with data …
Who Honours the Rules of Federalism? Party System Nationalisation and Fiscal Performance
This article explores the impact of decentralisation on countries’ fiscal outcomes paying attention to one aspect usually neglected in the literature: the relevance of local politics, proxied by party system nationalisation. Based on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1970–2011, our findings are threefold. First, both fiscal and political decentralisations have a virtuous effect on fiscal performance, improving ge…
Democracy and Football
Objectives \nThis article relies on data from two samples of 47 and 49 European countries from 1950 through 2011 and 1,980 and 1,960 football domestic leagues, respectively, to explore to what extent political regimes affect the competitive balance in domestic football (soccer) leagues. \n \nMethods \nWe run OLS cross-sectional regressions comparing democracies and nondemocracies and pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses conducted on the 13…
La influencia de los resultados económicos sobre el apoyo electoral de los gobiernos autonómicos, 1980-1997
Este artículo estudia la validez de la incumbency-oriented hypothesis en las Comunidades Autónomas españolas. Los resultados de nuestro análisis sugieren que los factores políticos resultan más relevantes que la evolución de las variables económicas y presupuestarias en la explicación y predicción del apoyo electoral de los partidos en el gobierno
The Effects of Regional Sizing on Growth
Descentralización y voto económico en España
En este artículo se analiza el voto económico en contextos descentralizados.La existencia de varias arenas de competición política abre lapuerta a los procesos de contaminación electoral vertical, lo que implicaque los electores no juzguen de forma independiente la actuación degobiernos nacionales y regionales. Con datos para España en el período1982-2008, se comprueba que la contaminación electoral tiene lugardesde la arena nacional a la regiona…
Budget Transparency in Local Governments
The aim of this paper is to shed additional light on the determinants of budget transparency in local governments. Our work is based on a Likert-type survey questionnaire specifically designed to measure budget transparency in small municipalities. The questionnaire is based on the IMF's revised Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency (2007). Results from 33 Galician municipalities are used to assess its internal consistency and to test a b…
On the Political Determinants of Intergovernmental Grants in Decentralized Countries
This article examines the effect of political variables on the gains obtained by Spanish regions in periodical bargaining of the intergovernmental financing agreements and on the regional distribution of discretional earmarked grants. First, we find that the relationship between gains in transferred revenues and on regional public debt stocks depends on the period and the specific issues discussed in the corresponding negotiation. Second, we show…
Can the periphery achieve core? The case of the automobile components industry in Spain
Democracy and Football
Objectives \nThis article relies on data from two samples of 47 and 49 European countries from 1950 through 2011 and 1,980 and 1,960 football domestic leagues, respectively, to explore to what extent political regimes affect the competitive balance in domestic football (soccer) leagues. \n \nMethods \nWe run OLS cross-sectional regressions comparing democracies and nondemocracies and pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses conducted on the 13…
An economic explanation of the nationalization of electoral politics
The Impact of Fiscal Decentralization
In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and updated review of the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economy, society and politics. Our first target is the examination of two crucial and yet unsolved issues in the empirical literature on decentralization: the proper measurement of decentralization itself and its potential endogeneity in econometric estimates. Then, we discuss the main existing findings on the effects of decentralization on …
Spanish fiscal decentralization
Both fiscal and political decentralization have been a worldwide trend in recent decades. Spain is probably the best example of this evolution, insofar as it became one of the most decentralized countries in the world in just over three decades, departing for a highly centralized institutional framework. This paper aims to conduct a detailed analysis of this process, focusing on the fiscal aspects. While we show the successful aspects, we also po…
Who Honours the Rules of Federalism? Party System Nationalisation and Fiscal Performance
This article explores the impact of decentralisation on countries’ fiscal outcomes paying attention to one aspect usually neglected in the literature: the relevance of local politics, proxied by party system nationalisation. Based on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1970–2011, our findings are threefold. First, both fiscal and political decentralisations have a virtuous effect on fiscal performance, improving ge…
Fiscal policy in former Yugoslavian countries (2001–2014)
The aim of this paper is to analyse fiscal policy in former Yugoslavian countries over the period 2001–2014. The contribution of the paper is threefold; first, we build a homogeneous database to describe the evolution of the main fiscal aggregates in each country using an identical analytical structure. Second, we analyse the composition of national tax revenues to determine whether common patterns are still present, or if they have evolved in di…
Decentralization and Football
Objectives We show that decentralization of economic and political power makes a substantial difference in football. Decentralization increases the competitive balance of domestic football leagues and creates an advantage for clubs from decentralized countries in international competitions. Methods We run pooled cross‐sectional time‐series analyses using data from 35 European countries over the period 1950–2010 and logistic regressions with data …
Fiscal stability during the Great Recession
This paper provides an empirical analysis aimed at disentangling the roles played by decentralization level and design as well as the extended decentralized framework provided by subnational borrowing rules and fiscal responsibility laws on a country’s fiscal stability. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ data from the period 1995–2014, strong regularities are found regarding the effects of decentralizat…
Decentralization after the Great Recession
The general question addressed in this special issue of Regional Studies is whether the Great Recession of 2008 affected the political consensus about decentralization and the conventional wisdom about its impact on economic, political and social outcomes. The present introduction emphasizes the two main lines of enquiry that cut across all the papers in this issue. First, the effects of the Great Recession on the relations between national and s…
Do Political Factors Affect Fiscal Consolidation? Evidence From Spanish Regional Governments
This paper empirically examines the political factors behind the different fiscal consolidation paths across Spanish regions over the period 2004 to 2017. Spanish regions provide an interesting case study due to both the strong fiscal decentralization and the deep impact of the so-called “Great Recession” on subcentral budget constraints in Spain. The estimates confirm that governments react to fiscal imbalances by reducing expenditure growth, bu…
Putting land to work
Agricultural land abandonment is a relevant occurrence in mountainous and peripheral regions all over the world. While both positive and negative environmental consequences of this abandonment are documented (depending on the specific location and scale), in rural areas it is always linked to a reduction in production and income. To address some of these problems, the several administrative layers within the European Union (EU) have put in place …
Waiting or Acting? The Gender Gap in International Football Success
The conditions under which women's national football teams do better or worse in international tournaments remains an open question. Using data from 116 countries worldwide, we have examined three arguments accounting for the gender gap in international football success, focusing on positive externalities from economic development and women's empowerment, and the active policies promoting women's football. Our findings show that the international…
Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision
The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of …
Work group diversity in professional football
Objective Although there is a huge literature examining how diversity affects group performance, an important limitation is the lack of evidence at the employee level. This article tries to fill this gap. We focus on professional football given the high ethnic diversity of football squads, the nonexistence of language barriers to hire players, and the granularity of data. Methods Relying on data from 1528 professional footballers joining a new cl…
Extreme events and the resilience of decentralised governance
Extreme events, such as economic crises, natural disasters or military conflicts, can affect the balance between centralisation and decentralisation forces across countries and transform, temporarily or more permanently, the design of multilevel governance. Using a panel of 91 developing and developed countries from 1960 to 2018, and another for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between 1995 and 2018, we exam…
Autogobierno y modernización de Galicia durante las cuatro últimas décadas
Las cuatro décadas de autogobierno de Galicia (1980-2020) han sido un éxito. El tamaño de su economía se ha duplicado y la renta por habitante ha progresado notablemente, gracias a un profundo cambio estructural, que incluye una fuerte desagrarización y elevadas ganancias de productividad. En paralelo, España se democratizó, se descentralizó, entró en la Unión Europea y construyó un homologable estado del bienestar. En síntesis, los cambios han f…
Rural Decline and Spatial Voting Patterns
How does rural decline affect electoral politics? A well-known argument is that the growing geographical polarisation of populations between prospering major cities and declining hinterlands is emerging as a cleavage of electoral politics in developed countries. But prior work has focussed on specific outcomes of rural decline rather than examining whether the geographical distribution of political attitudes and behaviours within countries has be…
Influencia de los resultados económicos sobre el apoyo electoral de los gobiernos autonómicos, 1980-1997
Este artículo estudia la validez de la incumbency-oriented hypothesis en las ComunidadesAutónomas españolas. Los resultados de nuestro análisis sugieren que los factores políticos resultanmás relevantes que la evolución de las variables económicas y presupuestarias en la explicacióny predicción del apoyo electoral de los partidos en el gobierno
Understanding citizens’ knowledge and preferences for fiscal equalization in decentralized countries
The registered version of this article, first published in Regional & Federal Studies, is available online at the publisher's website: Taylor and Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2025.2551599
Economics (23 works) · Political science (21 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Decentralization (10 works) · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy (10 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (9 works) · Macroeconomics (9 works) · Market economy (9 works) · Law (7 works)