Mature federations have relatively transparent delineations of authority among levels of government; subnational governments enjoy considerable autonomy in their expenditure, revenue, and debt policies. In other countries, problems of soft budget constraints, bailouts, and fiscal and financial...

This paper examines the implications of federal statutory restrictions on state government taxing powers. Such pre–emption can prevent states from pursuing policies that are best adapted to their economic circumstances and objectives, inefficiently constraining decentralized state tax...

Although major disasters like the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes are infrequent, they dominate empirical loss distributions, as illustrated by a statistical analysis of flood losses in Louisiana. Extraordinary Federal emergency assistance has shifted a large portion of the burden of the 2005 floods...

Interjurisdictional flows of imperfectly-mobile migrants, investment, and other productive resources result in the costly dynamic adjustment of resource stocks. This paper investigates the comparative dynamics of adjustment to changes in local fiscal policy with two imperfectly mobile productive...