The U.S. Constitution includes many checks and balances that necessitate the ruling party to compromise with the opposition. I develop a model in which this feature prompts the President to compromise on the strength of the candidates nominated for positions in the federal government and...

We model the trade-off between centralized and decentralized decision making over the provision of local public goods. Centralized decisions are made in a legislature of locally elected representatives, and this creates a conflict of interest between citizens in different jurisdictions. The...

We extend the literature on local income tax competition by allowing for inter-jurisdictional spillovers and imperfect rivalry in consumption of a publicly provided good. Comparing decentralized second-best results of a theoretical model with an efficient benchmark, we identify three...