This article starts by surveying the literature on economic federalism and relating it to network industries. Some new developments (which focus on the role of inter-jurisdictional externalities and multiple objectives) are then added and used to analyze regulatory arrangements in...

This paper examines the role of institutions of territorial representation in shaping long-term patterns of inter-regional redistribution within federations. A simple legislative bargaining model with endogenous taxation suggests that over-represented states should be favored in the distribution...

One of the fundamental tenets of fiscal federalism is that, absent various sorts of externalities, decentralized governments that rely on own-source revenues should be more fiscally efficient than decentralized governments that rely on grant financing. The argument relies in part on the idea...

Recent experience with disasters and terrorist attacks in the US indicates that state and local governments rely on the federal sector for support after disasters occur. But these same governments are responsible for investing in infrastructure designed to reduce vulnerability to natural and...

Previous literature widely assumes that taxes are optimized in local public finance while expenditures adjust residually. This paper endogenizes the choice of the optimization variable. In particular, it analyzes how federal policy toward local governments influences the way local governments...