In the present article, Tiebout meets Laffont and Tirole in the land of Fiscal Federalism. We use a non-trivial Principal-Multi-Agent model to characterize the optimal intergovernmental grant schedule, when the cost of local public goods depends on hidden characteristics and actions of local governments, and under citizen free mobility. We show that local governments earn informational rents, and how optimal local taxes, public good production levels and land prices are jointly distorted at the second-best optimum, as a consequence of free mobility and asymmetric information. The effect of informational asymmetries is to decrease the average production of public goods and to increase the inter-jurisdictional variance of taxes and public-good production.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1559.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Scotchmer, Suzanne, 2002.
"Local public goods and clubs,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 29, pages 1997-2042
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Roger B. Myerson, 1978.
"Optimal Auction Design,"
Discussion Papers
362, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
[Downloadable!]
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)