In fiscal interaction, a policy is evolutionarily stable if, once adopted by all governments, jurisdictions that deviate from it fare worse than those that stick to it. Evolutionary stability is the appropriate solution concept for models of imitative learning (policy mimicking). We show that...

In this chapter, we assess recent contributions of computational models to the study of politics. We focus primarily on agent-based models developed by economists and political scientists. These models address collective action problems, questions related to institutional design and performance,...

Cooperative budgeting arrangements between state and local governments jointly fund local programs. The mix of state and local revenues contributed to these arrangements can change as budget priorities shift over time. This study examines the strategic choices public officials make as they...

We examine whether the strategic delegation problem in interregional negotiations can be solved by a governmental policy. It is well known that when an interregional negotiation is delegated to representatives, each region elects its representative strategically, resulting in inefficient...

This paper takes a mechanism design approach to federalism and assumes that local preferences are the private information of local jurisdictions. Contractual federalism is defined as a strategy-proof contract among the members of the federation supervised by a benevolent but not omniscient...

The concept of fair representation of voters in a committee representing different voters' groups, such as national representations in union of states, is discussed. This concept, introduced into discussion about voting rights in the Council of European Union in 2004, was narrowed to proposal of...

The European Union (EU) is not de jure a federation, but after 50 years of institutional evolution it possesses attributes of a federal state. One can conclude that EU is something betweenʺ federation and intergovernmental organization. If we measure something betweenʺ by interval [0, 1],...

This paper studies the efficiency of decentralized leadership in federations where selfish regional governments provide regional and federal public goods and the benevolent central government implements interregional earmarked and income transfers. Without residential mobility, unlimited...

We show that regional heterogeneity of underlying fundamentals (e.g. economic history, geography, social capital) can lead to extreme voting in federations. When the outcome of federal policies – such as transfer schemes, market regulation or migration laws – depends on these fundamentals,...

This study argues that the key issue for defining and solving the Eurozone’s (EZ) difficulties lies in readjusting the relationship between the centre and the periphery of the EZ. Our argument proceeds in two steps. Firstly, the basic finance problem of a centre-periphery system is captured by...