When do Cost Differentials among Privately Provided Public Goods make Income Transfer Policy Effective?

Some papers have disputed when cost differentials among privately provided public goods make income transfer policy effective. This paper clarifies the different assumptions underlying this disputation and shows that original cost equalization is a necessary and sufficient condition to hold the transfer neutrality.artificial cost differential

"Fiscal Decentralization, Commitment and Regional Inequality: Evidence from State-level Cross-sectional Data for the United States"

While conventional approaches to fiscal decentralization suggest that decentralization lowers the power of redistribution among regions, recent theories argue that fiscal decentralization works as a commitment device. In this manner, where the budget in a given region is highly dependent on transfers from the central government, there is an incentive for effort following fiscal decentralization. The former effect is argued to increase regional inequality, while the latter suggests a decrease in regional inequality. However no known empirical work has directly examined the relationship between fiscal decentralization and regional inequality. In this paper, cross-sectional data for the United States, excluding the convergence of regional income, are used to derive the net relationship. It is also the case that the direction of this effect on regional inequality depends on how fiscal decentralization is promoted. While the former distribution effect directly depends on the central government's share of power, the latter incentive effect depends on autonomy. Two measures that represent the power of the central government and autonomy are used to identify these effects. The results indicate that local expenditure or revenue share in fiscal decentralization has no significant effect on regional inequality, while the achievement of autonomy by fiscal decentralization has a negative effect on regional inequality. This supports the theory that fiscal decentralization works as a commitment device. The results also show that how fiscal decentralization is promoted is important for how it impacts on regional inequality.

"On Fiscal Federalism under Democracy"

In his seminal work on fiscal federalism, Oates (1972) addressed the socalled Decentralization Theorem, which states that, if such factors as scale economies and spillovers are left out of consideration, a decentralized system is always more efficient than a centralized system for the supply of local public goods. Based on his analytical framework, we contrarily show that a centralized system is at times more efficient than a decentralized system under a democratic decision rule (Proposition 2). The key to such a possibility is the interests of minorities that may be sacrificed in each lower district under decentralization. That is, when the majority adopts an extreme policy that is far from minorities' tastes in a lower district under decentralization, if instead a moderate policy which is closer to minorities' tastes were chosen under centralization, then the interests of minorities would be saved. As a result, centralization could attain higher social welfare than decentralization.

"Action Timing as a Collusive Common Good"

Frequent revision of firms' actions facilitates to sustain tacit collusion. Even when some, not all, firms revise their actions with enhanced frequency, the change contributes positively to collusive sustainability, i.e., lowering the critical discount factor. In this sense, the added frequency in revising actions can be viewed as a common good shared among oligopolists. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that, in a large class of environments, a firm's deviation can be deterred by no more than one punisher, implying that at most two firms need to invest in frequent revision in order to sustain collusion.

"Inflexibility as a Stabilisation Device"

A possible rationale for institutional conservatism, i.e., reluctance to adjust actions in accordance with external environmental changes, may be found in the payoff stabilisation effect it strategically affords. Suppose, for example, that one of the duopolists is capable of adjusting its action, either price or quantity, in response to unexpected demand fluctuations. Then the other duopolist, if incapable of such adjustments, recuperates some of the meager opportunities when the shock is negative whilst forgoing lucrative profit opportunities when the demand shock is positive, thereby "smoothes" its profits across varying states of demand in exchange for a small loss in expected profits, as opposed to when being as adjustable as its competitor. Similar qualitative results hold true both in Cournot and in Bertrand, and by extension, in a larger class of situations where economic decision makers interact through either strategic substitution or strategic complementarity.

"leadership meets soft budget"

In this paper, it is shown that real indeterminacy of stationary equilibria generically arises in most matching models with perfectly divisible fiat money. In other words, the real indeterminacy follows from the condition for stationarity of money holdings, and surprisingly it has nothing to do with the other specifications, e.g., the bargaining procedures, of the models. Thus if we assume the divisibility of money in money search models, it becomes quite difficult to make accurate predictions of the effects of some policies.

"Short-run and Long-run Effects of Corruption on Economic Growth: Evidence from State-Level Cross-Section Data for the United States"

Theoretical studies suggest that corruption may counteract government failure and promote economic growth in the short run, given exogenously determined suboptimal bureaucratic rules and regulations. As the government failure is itself a function of corruption, however, corruption should have detrimental effects on economic growth in the long run. In this paper, we measure the rate of economic growth for various time spans - short (1998?2000), middle (1995-2000) and long (1991-2000) - using previously uninvestigated state-level cross-section data for the United States. Our two-stage least square (2SLS) estimates with a carefully selected set of instruments show that the effect of corruption on economic growth is indeed negative and statistically significant in the middle and long spans but insignificant in the short span.

Endogenous Choice on Tax Instruments in a Tax Competition Model: Unit Tax versus Ad Valorem Tax

This paper analyzes an endogenous choice problem with regard to tax instruments in a capital tax competition model. Considering a symmetric and two-region model of tax competition, where each region is allowed to choose either unit or ad valorem tax, we show that selecting unit tax as a policy instrument is the dominant strategy of governments. An interpretation of this result is clearly explained by the properties of the best response curves.Tax competition, Unit tax, Ad valorem tax

Soft budgets and local borrowing regulation in a dynamic decentralized leadership model with saving and free mobility

This paper considers a simple dynamic decentralized leadership model with local borrowing and regional productivity enhancing investment. The central government is benevolent but cannot commit. The local governments strategically act while accounting for the ex post motive of the central government. We then investigate inefficiency in the subgame perfect equilibrium. We analyze the effect of central control on local borrowings. It is revealed that the central control is of no use. The model is extended to the case with residential mobility which gives different policy implications