Size and Soft Budget Constraints

There is much evidence against the so-called "too big to fail" hypothesis in the case of bailouts to sub-national governments. We look at a model where districts of di_erent size provide local public goods with positive spillovers. Matching grants of a central government can induce socially-e_cient provision, but districts can still exploit the intervening central government by inducing direct _nancing. We show that the ability of a district to induce a bailout from the central government and district size are negatively correlated.