We develop a model of Tiebout sorting based on decentralized income taxation, which allows for spillovers and imperfect rivalry in consumption of the publicly provided good. We identify three sources of welfare loss from decentralization: Imperfect redistribution, inter-jurisdictional...

In many low-income countries, local public goods are provided by non-governmental organizations and local communities, rather than by government. In rural Tanzania, more than 500 organizations install different technologies of water pumps which local communities are then responsible for...

We explore the old but highly topical question of the efficient provision of public goods: could the laisser-faire lead to efficiency? Or do we need government to provide these goods? Some authors, Stiglitz (1982), Lindsay and Dougan (2013) among others, discussed some conditions under which the...

In a circular neighborhood with each member having a left and a right neighbor, individuals choose two contribution levels, one each for the public good shared with the left, respectively right, neighbor. This allows for general free riders, who do not contribute at all, and general cooperators,...

Many public goods that are provided by coalitions have a group-size effect. Namely, people prefer to consume a public good in a larger coalition. This paper studies local public goods games with anonymous and separable group-size effect. The core is nonempty when coalition feasible sets are...

Recently China's central government has promoted public goods investment in pursuit of rural development and poverty reduction. However, the top down nature of investment planning may lead to mismatches between public goods projects and the demands of local residents. Using village- and...

Decentralizing the allocation of public goods by giving funds directly to communities takes advantage of local information concerning needs, but decreases the accountability over how funds are used; leaving funds open to misuse or capture by local elites. In Indonesia, the World Bank attempts to...

We extend the ratio equilibrium concept (Kaneko 1977a,b) to local public good economies by defining and analyzing Local Public Good Equilibrium (LPGE). We show existence of LPGE for a far wider class of economies than prior work seeking to identify equilibria for local public good economies. In...

We experimentally explore public good production levels, and the endogenous formation of network structures to facilitate output sharing, among agents with heterogeneous production costs or valuations. Results corroborate the key theoretical insights of Kinateder & Merlino (2017) characterizing...