This paper investigates the extent to which interjurisdictional spillovers -- transboundary pollution and the so-called 'race to the bottom' -- distort decentralized environmental regulation in practice. To that end, I develop a model in which local jurisdictions set regulations by trading-off...

This paper studies fiscal federalism when regions differ in voters’ ability to monitor public officials. We develop a model of political agency in which rent-seeking politicians provide public goods to win support from heterogeneously informed voters. In equilibrium, voter information...

Abstract: This paper studies fiscal federalism when voter information varies across regions. We develop a model of political agency with heterogeneously informed voters. Rentseeking politicians provide public goods to win the votes of the informed. As a result, rent extraction is lower in...

This paper studies fiscal federalism when voter information varies across regions. We develop a model of political agency with heterogeneously informed voters. Rent seeking politicians provide public goods to win the votes of the informed. As a result, rent extraction is lower in regions with...

This paper studies fiscal federalism when voter information varies across regions. We develop a model of political agency with heterogeneously informed voters. Rent-seeking politicians provide public goods to win the votes of the informed. As a result, rent extraction is lower in regions with...

Economists have been concerned that sovereign communities may distort environmental policies to attract mobile capital. This paper provides something of a challenge to this idea. It does so by extending the model of Oates and Schwab (1988) to allow the supply of capital to a state, whether...

This paper develops a micro-founded city systems model with an endogenous number of cities to explore whether local governments establish the optimal city size when production processes involve environmental pollution. Our analysis delivers two key insights. First, if an optimal scheme to...

This paper develops a model with an endogenous number of cities to explore whether local governments establish the optimal city size when key activities in the city are associated with emissions that harm consumers. In contrast to extant research, our model is fully micro-founded with respect to...

This paper develops a micro-founded city systems model with an endogenous number of cities to explore whether local governments establish the optimal city size when production processes involve environmental pollution. Our analysis delivers two key insights. First, if an optimal scheme to...

This paper develops a model with an endogenous number of cities to explore whether local governments establish the optimal city size when key activities in the city are associated with emissions that harm consumers. In contrast to extant research, our model is fully micro-founded with respect to...