IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nwu/cmsems/1521.html

Contractual Federalism and Strategy-proof Coordination

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine Loeper

Abstract

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 federal authority. We show that even if the size of the information to be elicited is minimal, the incentive compatibility constraint has a bite in terms of flexibility and welfare. Strategy-proof and efficient federal mechanisms are necessarily uniform. There exists inefficient and non-uniform strategy-proof mechanisms, but they are socially worse than non cooperative decentralization. Federal mechanisms which are neutral and robust to coalition manipulations are equivalent to voting rules on uniform policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine Loeper, 2008. "Contractual Federalism and Strategy-proof Coordination," Discussion Papers 1521, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:1521
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/1521.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barbera, Salvador & Sonnenschein, Hugo & Zhou, Lin, 1991. "Voting by Committees," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 595-609, May.
    2. Antonio Estache & J. Cremer & Paul Seabright, 1996. "Decentralizing Public Services: What can we learn from the Theory of the Firm?," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/44016, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Wallace E. Oates & Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "An Essay on Fiscal Federalism," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 22, pages 384-414, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Loeper, Antoine, 2011. "Coordination in heterogeneous federal systems," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 900-912, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sigüenza, Waleska & Artabe, Alaitz, 2022. "Do individuals’ health preferences validate the decentralisation of the public health system in Spain?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(7), pages 680-687.
    2. François Bareille & Matteo Zavalloni, 2020. "Decentralisation of agri-environmental policy design," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 47(4), pages 1502-1530.
    3. Alejandro Esteller & Albert Solé, 2005. "Does decentralization improve the efficiency in the allocation of public investment? Evidence from Spain," Working Papers 2005/5, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    4. Giampaolo Garzarelli, 2006. "Cognition, Incentives, and Public Governance," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(3), pages 235-257, May.
    5. Bareille, F. & Zavalloni, M., 2018. "Agri-environmental policy decentralization: theoretical analysis and application to abandoned wetland in Brittany," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277109, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich & Schaltegger, Christoph A., 2007. "With or Against the People? The Impact of a Bottom-Up Approach on Tax Morale and the Shadow Economy," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt6331x6vz, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    7. Berga, Dolors & Serizawa, Shigehiro, 2000. "Maximal Domain for Strategy-Proof Rules with One Public Good," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 39-61, January.
    8. Podinovski, Vladislav V., 2010. "Set choice problems with incomplete information about the preferences of the decision maker," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(1), pages 371-379, November.
    9. Gijs Roelofs & Daniel Vuuren, 2017. "The Decentralization of Social Assistance and the Rise of Disability Insurance Enrolment," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-21, March.
    10. Zodrow, George R, 2003. "Tax Competition and Tax Coordination in the European Union," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(6), pages 651-671, November.
    11. Dinko Dimitrov & Ruud Hendrickx & Peter Borm, 2004. "Good and bad objects: the symmetric difference rule," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(11), pages 1-7.
    12. Bock, Hans-Hermann & Day, William H. E. & McMorris, F. R., 1998. "Consensus rules for committee elections," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 219-232, May.
    13. Anastassios Chardas, 2012. "Multi-level governance and the application of the partnership principle in times of economic crisis in Greece," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 56, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    14. Benjamin Larin & Bernd Süssmuth, 2014. "Fiscal Autonomy and Fiscal Sustainability: Subnational Taxation and Public Indebtedness in Contemporary Spain," CESifo Working Paper Series 4726, CESifo.
    15. Bonifacio, Agustín G. & Massó, Jordi & Neme, Pablo, 2023. "Preference restrictions for simple and strategy-proof rules: Local and weakly single-peaked domains," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    16. Barbera, S. & Bossert, W. & Pattanaik, P.K., 2001. "Ranking Sets of Objects," Cahiers de recherche 2001-02, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    17. Robert P. Inman, 2008. "Federalism's Values and the Value of Federalism," NBER Working Papers 13735, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    19. Astghik Mavisakalyan, 2013. "Development Priorities in an Emerging Decentralized Economy: The Case of Armenia’s Local Development Programs," Transition Studies Review, Springer;Central Eastern European University Network (CEEUN), vol. 20(1), pages 105-118, April.
    20. Samet, Dov & Schmeidler, David, 2003. "Between liberalism and democracy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 213-233, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:1521. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Fran Walker The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Fran Walker to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmnwuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.