Taxation is only sustainable if the general public complies with it. This observation is uncontroversial with tax practitioners but has been ignored by the public finance tradition, which has interpreted tax constitutions as binding contracts by which the power to tax is irretrievably conferred...

We study contestability in non-profit markets where non-commercial providers supply a homogeneous collective good or service through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. Unlike in the case of for-profit markets, in the non-profit case the absence of price-based sales contracts between...

We describe a model of fundraising in social groups, where private information about quality of provision is transmitted by social proximity. Individuals engage in voluntary provision of a pure collective good that is consumed by both neighbors and non-neighbors. We show that, unlike in the case...

We study competition between nonprofit providers supplying a collective service through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. When providers adopt a not-for-profit mission, the absence of a residual claimant can impede entry, pro- tecting the position of an inefficient incumbent. Moreover,...

Recent evidence suggests that individuals do not always take notice of tax attributes when making their choices. This paper focuses on the case of tax relief for charitable contributions. Although a fully rational donor should view a matched payment to the receiving charity and a tax rebate of...

This Paper explores the theoretical relationship between tax relief for private giving and locational equilibria. Tax relief for giving may receive political support at the local level because of its distributional effects; however, through its effects on public provision choices, such relief...

This paper analyses policy centralization outcomes in a two-jurisdiction model of public good provision choices with heterogeneous policy preferences and inter-jurisdictional policy spillovers under two alternative political procedures: direct referendum and representative democracy. We show...

Fixed costs that are not sunk do not translate into entry barriers against for-profit competitors. We show that in the case of non-commercial, not- for-profit providers, the presence of fixed costs may protect the position of an inefficient incumbent. In these situations, successfully contesting...

We show that warm-glow motives in provision by competing suppliers can lead to inefficient charity selection. In these situations, discretionary donor choices can promote efficient charity selection even when provision outcomes are non-verifiable. Government funding arrangements, on the other...

We study charitable giving within social groups. Exploiting a unique dataset, we establish three key relationships between social group size and fundraising outcomes: (i) a positive relationship between group size and the total number of donations; (ii) a negative relationship between group size...