Suchergebnisse

In the past several decades, many countries, among them non-democratic, chose to decentralize their governments. Building on insights provided by the "second generation" wave of research on fiscal federalism, this paper proposes a unified model to account for this. The idea is that decentralization serves as a commitment device to ensure that ex post chose policies will reflect regional preferences, thereby boosting individual productive effort incentives. This theory may explain the decentralization process in China in 1980-1990s, as well as the fact that government decentralization is generally more prevalent in democracies.

This paper studies a constitutional framework that enables sustainable federative agreements. In the model, districts decide on local policies and envision the possibility of entering a federation. Focusing on rules for legislative bargaining in the federation, I find that a non-egalitarian bargaining rule, which assigns policy making power to one of the district's representatives is welfare inferior to the decentralized status quo. In contrast, under an egalitarian bargaining procedure, federation yields a welfare superior outcome. The analysis indicates the desirability of making such egalitarian bargaining rules credible.

This paper offers an explanation for the widespread phenomenon of uniform public schooling, which is viewed here as a way for the government to precommit itself to restraints on future income redistribution. Such precommitment is likely to enhance accumulation of human capital, to bolster economic growth, and, under certain circumstances, to constitu te a preferred choice for a majority of voters.