social optimum, while decentralization leads to "too little." Three effects of centralization — an "informational externality … democracy, political decentralization has been thought to stimulate policy experimentation. We reexamine the political economy … logic suggests the opposite conclusion: centralization usually leads to "too much" policy experimentation, compared to the …

accountability. We also show that decentralization can only Pareto dominate centralization in economies with negative externalities. … exposed to electoral uncertainty. We show that centralization may, but need not, result in a loss of electoral accountability …. We identify an important asymmetry between positive and negative externalities and show that centralization may not be …

a model where corruption opportunities are lower under centralization at each period of time, decentralization makes it …We study the effect of decentralization on corruption in a political agency model from the perspective of a region. In … easier for citizens to detect corrupt incumbents. As a consequence, the relationship between fiscal decentralization and …