This paper identifies conditions under which, starting from any tax distorting equilibrium, destination- and origin-based indirect tax-harmonizing reforms are potentially Pareto improving in the presence of global public goods. The first condition (unrequited transfers between governments)...

Conventional wisdom has it that policy innovation is better promoted in a federal rather than in a unitary system. Recent research, however, has provided theoretical evidence to the contrary: a multi-jurisdictional system is characterized - due to the existence of a horizontal information...

A multi-jurisdictional system is thought to improve, through yardstick competition, accountability. At the same time equalization programs, a common feature of multijurisdictional systems, are thought to be a prerequisite for both efficiency of the internal market and the equity objective of the...

We consider the hold-up problem between a foreign direct investor and the government(s) in a host country with weak governmental structure and lack of power to commit. Using Nash threats, we show that an efficient investment level can be sustained for a sufficiently high discount factor and ask...

This paper explores the role of trade instruments in globally efficient climate policies, focusing on the central issue of whether border tax adjustment (BTA) is warranted when carbon prices differ internationally. It shows that tariff policy has a role in easing crosscountry distributional...

This paper explores the role of information transmission and misaligned interests across levels of government in explaining variation in the degree of decentralization across countries. Within a two-sided incomplete information principal-agent framework, it analyzes two alternative...