The paper presents an axiomatic restatement of the standard approach to nonlinear income taxation. It assumes a finite number of taxpayers rather than an uncountable infinity. Analytical tools are developed which facilitate proving the existence of tax schedules that are continuous,...

This paper examines how capital tax competition affects jurisdiction formation. We describe a locational model of public goods provision, where jurisdictions are represented by coalitions of consumers with similar tastes, and where the levels of taxation and local public goods provision within...

Since the early days of the republic, state and local governments have periodically embarked on widespread, large-scale attempts to spur economic growth through targeted economic development subsidies. Interestingly, the constitutions of nearly every state in the union contain provisions that,...

In this paper we examine the potential of democratic constitutions for the provision of divisible public goods in a large economy. Our main insights are as follows: When aggregate shocks are absent, the combination of the following rules yields first-best allocations: a supermajority rule, equal...