Although reassignment of policy instruments among governments in many federations is a recurring event, there is no widely accepted, positive model of the phenomenon. This stands in contrast to the well established body of work on the normative theory of the efficient federal assignment. In this...

Local taxes and the related taxing power are significant determinants of public authority decentralization. Local taxes should primarily serve as an effective source of self-government revenues. Therefore, it is extremely important to identify and comprehend the motives and behaviors of...

This paper attempts to address two long standing questions in Public Finance: (i) why is the property tax, despite popular complaints about its fairness, the almost exclusive tax instrument used by local governments, and (ii) why do we consistently observe higher levels of governments undermine...