The question of whether governments spend too much or too little has been a frequent subject of debate, but has been infrequently analyzed.This paper proposes and then applies a methodology which checks to see whether the "Samuelson condition" for the efficient provision of local public...

Until recently, estimates of demand functions for public goods were obtained (either with aggregate or micro survey data) using single equation estimation techniques. However, demand estimates may be biased when in dividuals' choices of communities are dependent upon the quantity and quality of...

Papers that examine fiscal competition for mobile factors of production commonly employ simultaneous move games between two states and focus on the inefficiency of the equilibria. Most often, the existence of the equilibrium is left unexplored. By examining decision making by governments that...