Earmarked federal grants are ubiquitous and significant. Traditional fiscal federalism is unable to explain the widespread utilization of such grants. Recent arguments focusing on the potential benefits of centralized earmarking in reducing incentives for the creation of soft budgets at...

In a federation featuring decentralized leadership, regional governments compete by setting capital taxes in anticipation of the central government's fiscal-equalization and income-redistribution policies. As a benchmark, it is first demonstrated that the constrained socially optimal allocation...

In a federation with decentralized leadership, many regional governments provide multiple types of public goods and the center implements interregional income transfers. The symmetric perfect equilibrium under unlimited decentralized leadership is inefficient because regional public goods are...

Numerous non-profit organizations that contribute to collective goods also provide prestige to their members. Some of these institutions function as prestige clubs, with prestige levels and member contributions working as club goods and membership fees, respectively. We investigate the...

This paper offers a theoretical model for the analysis of illegal cartels. Given the nature of the cartel, retaliation is also illegal. To assess the stability of collusion as a criminal organization, we propose a one-shot game based on Bertrand competition with product differentiation. We...

The Paris Agreement builds on Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by most participating nations. The INDCs vary across nations, since national circumstances differ, including national incomes and damages. The INDCs follow a bottom-up approach, whereby nations submit...

In a family context with endogenous timing, multiple public goods and alternative parental instruments, we show that the optimal timing for the sequential-action game played by rotten kids and a parent depends crucially on whether the kids are homogeneous or heterogeneous. For homogeneous kids,...

We examine the formation of multilateral, hub-and-spoke and bilateral international R&D strategic alliances (overlapping climate clubs) to reduce CO2 emissions. R&D provision in clubs produces two types of positive externalities: a global public good (i.e., reduction of CO2 emissions) and...

We examine the formation of multilateral, hub-and-spoke and bilateral international R&D strategic alliances (overlapping climate clubs) to reduce CO2 emissions. R&D provision in clubs produces two types of positive externalities: a global public good (i.e., reduction of CO2 emissions) and...

This study compares energy and emission taxes used to control pollution and provide incentives for the adoption of an advanced abatement technology in a Cournot oligopoly. We examine multistage games where the government may intervene in order to maximize social welfare by setting an...