We examine the incentives of regions in a country to unite or toseparate. We find that smaller regions have greater incentives tounite, relative to larger regions. We show, however, that on thewhole, majority voting on separation and union generates excessiveincentives to separate. This leads us...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the com-petitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the competitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...

This paper examines the effect of local political decision-making institutions (i.e., direct democracy vs. representative democracy) on citizens' preferences toward public spending. Exogenous variation in institutions comes from a regression discontinuity design, which exploits a discrete change...

Omission of collective choice prevents the analyst from understanding the central role of political equilibrium. To create a framework that places tax policies in a broader equilibrium context, we must model the underlying collective allocation mechanism and use it as a starting point, whether...

Omission of collective choice prevents the analyst from understanding the central role of political equilibrium. To create a framework that places tax policies in a broader equilibrium context, we must model the underlying collective allocation mechanism and use it as a starting point, whether...