This paper develops a positive theory of overlapping income taxation in a federation of states. Its main motivation comes from the observation that in the U.S. states income tax rates are significantly lower than the federal income tax rate. The analysis shows that in a federal system total...

The design of environmental spending at the national or local level stands on the concept of subsidiarity and on the theory of fiscal federalism. The main question is, so forth, studying when centralization of a public economic function, such as the protection of the environment, is welfare...

The ICMS-Ecológico is a fiscal transfer mechanism from states to municipalities, implemented in the early 1990's in Brazil, to reward municipalities for the creation and management of protected areas. This paper investigates the efficiency of this mechanism by testing for the presence of...

The paper considers a model of a federation with two heterogeneous regions that try to attract the capital by competing in capital income taxes and public investment that enhance the productivity of capital. The regions’ choices determine the allocation of capital across the regions and their...

Revenue sharing can be used to discourage low tax regions from competing for capital and firms with high tax regions. However, with heterogeneous regions, revenue sharing involves net transfers across regions and creates a “moral-hazard” problem - that is, regions may want to invest less in...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of matching grants to correct for interjurisdictional spillovers in the light of Bernheim general neutrality result. Indeed this result suggests that the usual argument that matching grants are needed to internalize the externality arising from the...

This paper studies optimal redistribution among two different regions in a federal state. Regional governments supply local public goods financed by distorting local taxes. They have better information on their tax bases than the federal government. We model this both as an adverse selection...

We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to occur in jurisdictions with referendum decisions on policy centralization. Citizens choose centralization of public spending and revenue in order to internalize spillovers if individual...

The advantages and disadvantages of fiscal federalism are widely discussed in economics and political science. While some authors argue that federalism favors individual initiatives and serves as a market preserving device, others emphasize the dangers arising from an increasing corruption and...

We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to occur in jurisdictions with referendum decisions on policy cen-tralization. Citizens choose centralization of public spending and revenue in order to internalize spillovers if individual...