In this paper, we characterize a mechanism for reducing pollution emissions in which countries, acting non-cooperatively, commit to match each others' abatement levels and may subsequently engage in emissions quota trading. The analysis shows that the mechanism leads to efficient outcomes. The level of emissions is efficient, and if the matching abatements process includes a quota trading stage, the marginal benefits of emissions are also equalized across countries. Given the equilibrium matching rates, the initial allocation of emission quotas (before trading) reflects each country's marginal valuation for lower pollution relative to its marginal benefit from emissions. These results hold for any number of countries, in an environment where countries have different abatement technologies and different benefits from emissions, and even if the emissions of countries are imperfect substitutes in each country's damage function. In a dynamic two-period setting, the mechanism achieves both intra-temporal and inter-temporal efficiency. We extend the model by assuming that countries are voluntarily contributing to an international public good, in addition to undertaking pollution abatements, and find that the level of emissions may be efficient even without any matching abatement commitments, and the marginal benefits of emissions may be equalized across countries even without quota trading.

This paper studies multi-stage processes of non-cooperative voluntary provision of public goods. In the first stage, one or more players announce contributions that may be conditional on the subsequent contributions of others. In later stages, players choose their own contributions and fulfill any commitments made in the first stage. Equilibrium contributions are characterized under different assumptions about the commitment ability of players, the number of public goods and whether players commit to matching rates or to discrete quantities. We focus on contribution mechanisms that can emerge and be sustainable without a central authority, and that therefore may be particularly relevant for the provision of international public goods. Efficient levels of public goods can be achieved under some circumstances.

This paper examines various circumstances under which decentralized pollution policies can be efficient both in federal settings and in multi-region settings with labour mobility. We consider a model in which pollution control policies are set by regional governments non-cooperatively and pollution damages are borne by the residents of all regions. We characterize the efficiency of pollution policies, and of population allocation among regions, in a variety of scenarios, including when pollution policies are enacted before interregional transfers are determined by the federal government and before migration occurs; when migration decisions are taken before policy decisions; in the absence of a central government if regional governments can make voluntary interregional transfers; when decisions over pollution control policies are followed by voluntary contributions by regions to a national public good; when regions can commit to matching the abatement efforts of each other; and when regions can commit to specific levels of abatement contingent on the emissions of other regions not exceeding some maximum level.

This paper studies optimal income taxation when different job types exist for workers of different skills. Each job type has some feasible range of incomes from which workers choose by varying labour supply. Workers are more productive than others in the jobs that suit them best. The model combines features of the classic optimal tax literature with labour variability along the intensive margin with the extensive-margin approach where workers make discrete job choices and/or participation decisions. We find that first-best maximin utility can be achieved in the second-best, and marginal tax rates below the top can be negative or zero.

This paper investigates the economic impacts of regional integration on a small jurisdiction in a dynamic fiscal competition environment. The tradeoffs between the economic benefits and the loss of policy flexibility resulting from integration are analyzed from the perspectives of fiscal revenue and GDP per capita. Our results show that the small jurisdiction's loss of flexibility in policy making can dominate the other effects of integration. Specifically, if the small jurisdiction's efficiency in providing public inputs is originally sufficiently high (low), regional integration always reduces (improves) its net revenue, independently of the extent of efficiency improvement due to integration. However, when the small jurisdiction's efficiency is originally intermediate, the impact on net revenue crucially depends on the magnitude of the efficiency effect. Our analysis also characterizes the tradeoffs resulting from integration between policy flexibility on the one hand and capital mobility and fiscal equalization on the other.