Much of the public finance literature argues that local governments behave competitively due to residents' ease of exit and entry. The model presented here challenges this widespread conclusion. Though it is costless to relocate to another locality, the presence of tax capitalization makes it...

Models of inefficient political failure have been criticized for implicitly assuming the irrationality of voters (Wittman, 1989, 1995, 1999; Coate and Morris, 1995). Building on Caplan's (1999) model of "rational irrationality", the current paper maintains that the assumption of voter irrationality...

There is a tension between libertarians' optimism about private supply of public goods and skepticism of the viability of voluntary collusion (Cowen 1992, Cowen and Sutter 1999). Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that the “free market in defense services”...