To successfully coordinate natural disaster relief, society must solve Hayek's "knowledge problem" at three critical information nodes: (1) identification of disaster; (2) determination of what relief is needed and who needs which relief resources; and (3) evaluation of on-going relief efforts....

Could bad weather be responsible for U.S. corruption? Natural disasters create resource windfalls in the states they strike by triggering federally-provided natural disaster relief. Like windfalls created by the natural resource curse and foreign aid, disaster relief windfalls may also increase...

This paper demonstrates that the optimal structure of taxation in a federal system of governments is one in which only lower level governments are allowed to tax, and the higher level of government receives its revenues as contributions from the lower level governments. The central inefficiency...

There is a large literature examining the macroeconomic effects of state economic development incentives on employment, income, tax revenue, and economic growth. At best, these incentives are found to be weakly effective at job creation, but inefficient due to the distortions, secondary effects,...