Endogenous Decentralization in Federal Environmental Policies

Transboundary Spillovers and Decentralization of Environmental Policies

Most US federal environmental policies allow states to assume responsibility for implementation and enforcement of regulations; states with this responsibility are referred to as “authorized” or having “primacy.” Although such decentralization may have benefits, it may also have costs with pollution spillovers across states. This paper estimates these costs empirically by studying the free ridi...

Fiscal decentralization, endogenous policies, and foreign direct investment: Theory and evidence from China and India

a r t i c l e i n f o A political-economy model is developed to explain why fiscal decentralization may have a non-monotonic effect on FDI inflows through endogenous policies. Too much fiscal decentralization hurts central government incentives, whereas too little fiscal decentralization renders the local governments vulnerable to capture by the protectionist special interest groups. Moreover, ...

Decentralization and corruption : Evidence from U . S . federal transfer programs

While some recent evidence suggests that more decentralization is associated with reduced corruption, no empirical work has examined whether different types of decentralization have differential effects on corruption. The theoretical literature has emphasized that expenditure decentralization will only be effective if accompanied by the devolution of revenue generation to local governments. In ...

Optimal governmental decentralization for environmental regulation

Analysis of federal and state policies and environmental issues for bioethanol production facilities.

The purpose of this work was to investigate incentives and barriers to fuel ethanol production from biomass in the U.S. during the past decade (2000-2010). In particular, we examine the results of policies and economic conditions during this period by way of cellulosic ethanol activity in four selected states with the potential to produce different types of feedstocks (i.e., sugar, starch, and ...