In fiscal interaction, a policy is evolutionarily stable if, once adopted by all governments, jurisdictions that deviate from it fare worse than those that stick to it. Evolutionary stability is the appropriate solution concept for models of imitative learning (policy mimicking). We show that...

This paper studies the efficiency of decentralized leadership in federations where selfish regional governments provide regional and federal public goods and the benevolent central government implements interregional earmarked and income transfers. Without residential mobility, unlimited...

Earmarked federal grants are ubiquitous and significant. Traditional fiscal federalism is unable to explain the widespread utilization of such grants. Recent arguments focusing on the potential benefits of centralized earmarking in reducing incentives for the creation of soft budgets at...

In a federation with decentralized leadership, many regional governments provide multiple types of public goods and the center implements interregional income transfers. The symmetric perfect equilibrium under unlimited decentralized leadership is inefficient because regional public goods are...

We take a decentralized approach to regulating environmental pollution in settings where each agent's pollution possibly affects all others. There is no central agency to enforce pollution abatement or coordinate monetary transfers. Moreover, agents possess private information, which precludes...

This paper studies the efficiency of decentralized leadership in federations where selfish regional governments provide regional and federal public goods and the benevolent central government implements interregional earmarked and income transfers. Without residential mobility, unlimited...