This paper presents a selective and non-technical survey of the role of intergovernmental equalization transfers as a device for achieving efficiency in the allocation of labor across regions in a decentralized nation, and for achieving fiscal equity among residents of various regions. We...

Conventional wisdom has it that the value-added tax is not a suitable instrument for lower-level jurisdictions (‘provinces’) in a federal system. The problems that arise when it is so used have become a serious constraint on the development of the VAT—and closer economic integration—in...

Vertical tax externalities between levels of government can occur in federal structures, with responses to the tax policies of one level of government affecting the tax base of the other. Such effects mostly arise when federal and state governments co-occupy the same tax base. This paper...