We study whether "coercive" public provision or voluntary private provision of public goods can survive when individuals who "vote with their feet" can choose between communities that differ in the way that public goods are provided. We obtain the following findings: (i) an equilibrium always...

This paper analyses the welfare effects of a change from centralized to decentralized political authority. The potential disadvantage with decentralization in our model is that local dominant groups with rather extreme preferences may win the vote and implement policies that harm the well-being...

A central question in the literature of economic voting is whether voters reward incumbents for distributive spending. Answering this question with causal evidence requires, first, to identify the voters who benefit from the spending, and second to know how they would have behaved in the absence...

We study geographic political representation and geographic distribution of local public goods within local jurisdictions using geo-coded data on politicians, the electorate and elementary schools. Descriptive analysis reveals that poorer neighborhoods are under-represented and that local...

Do voters value the quality of local public goods, such as whether pavements are clean, whether benches in the park need repair, or whether local roads are in good shape? Using almost 150,000 geo-located complaints that were posted on the complaint-platform FixMyStreet.com between 2007 and 2011,...

I explore the incentives under alternative electoral institutions for national politicians to efficiently provide local public goods. Using a career-concerns models which incorporates voter ideological heterogeneity and thus allows comparison of electoral-college and majoritarian elections at...

Cities increasingly address climate change, e.g. by pledging city-level emission reduction targets. This is puzzling for the provision of a global public good: what are city governments' reasons for doing so, and do pledges actually translate into emission reductions? Empirical studies have...

We study the classical free-rider problem in public goods provision in a large economy with uncertainty about the average valuation of the public good. Individual preferences over public goods are shaped by a skill and a taste parameter. We use a mechanism design approach to solve for the...