This paper analyzes mergers of regions in a two-tier setting with both horizontal and vertical tax competition. The merger of regions induces three effects on regional and local tax policies, which are transmitted both horizontally and vertically: i) an alleviation of tax competition at the...

We consider a country whose government provides a bundle of goods and services through a multi-tier administrative organization. We compare the optimal architectures of public governance (i.e. the division of the state into several tiers, the distribution of services among them, their number of...