This paper critically surveys the growing literature on the policy choices of local
governments. First, we identify various reasons for local government policy interactions …

I discuss recent contributions to the theory of group formation and the provision of jointly
consumed public goods and services. I highlight the distinction between models of pure …

China's economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction.
However, China's institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer …

LS kk DECENTRALIZATION i 5 jn vogue. Both in the industrialized and in the developing
world, nations are turning to devolution to improve the performance of their public sectors. In …

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical investigation of tax competition when voters
use the tax policy of neighboring jurisdictions as information to evaluate the performance of …

Pigou's proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces
public service levels is examined in this paper. A simple model with a national system of …

The authors advance a new perspective in the study of federalism. Their approach views
federalism as a governance solution of the state to credibly preserving market incentives …

Aligning the interests of local governments with market development is an important issue
for developing and transition economies. Using a panel data set from China, we investigate …

This paper develops a framework for estimating household preferences for school and
neighborhood attributes in the presence of sorting. It embeds a boundary discontinuity …

This paper takes a fresh look at the trade-off between centralized and decentralized
provision of local public goods. It argues that the sharing of the costs of local public …