I temi trattati in questa raccolta di materiale didattico spaziano da un richiamo di teoria dei giochi e di teoria della negoziazione al ruolo delle asimmetrie informative nei mercati. Le politiche redistributive sono trattate sia attraverso l’analisi del modello di Meltzer e Richard, sia nell’ambito dei modelli di federalismo fiscale, con particolare attenzione ai meccanismi di perequazione fiscale e yardstick competition. La competizione elettorale, intesa come meccanismo democratico di selezione delle politiche economiche è, invece, introdotta attraverso la presentazione di un modello di voto probabilistico. Si affrontano, inoltre, alcuni temi di interesse per l’economia meridionale, quali il problema della divergenza interregionale dei premi assicurativi o il parziale fallimento del mercato dell’olio extra-vergine d’oliva.

This paper deals with the issue of how two geographically separate jurisdictions share the cost of a centralized and uniformly provided public good. The key assumption is that jurisdictional representatives make decision by bargaining in the centralised legislature. Results suggest that jurisdictions may reach a mutually beneficial agreement by equalising the net welfare gain produced by the provision of the public good, rather than the public good cost. The model identifies the efficiency and redistributive implications of such an agreement.

1. Introduzione. – 2. I modelli economici del decentramento fiscale: centralizzazione e decentramento a confronto. – 2.1. Le teorie tradizionali: il teorema del decentramento di Oates. – 2.2. Il modello di Tiebout. – 2.3. Teoria del federalismo fiscale: un approccio positivo. – 3. Ripartizione delle funzioni tra i livelli di governo. – 4. Il finanziamento dei governi locali. – 5. I trasferimenti intergovernativi. – 6. Il decentramento in Italia. – 6.1. La finanza pubblica regionale. – 6.2. La perequazione comunale in Italia.

It is well known that one of the features of public choice, political realism, is embedded in a time-honored Italian tradition going back to Machiavelli and perpetuated by G. Mosca and V. Pareto in their political and sociological writings. The scientific spirit, which in their era led to the foundation of various social disciplines, fostered the applica-tion of economic analysis to the political sphere. In that context, Antonio de Viti de Marco (1858–1943) formulated an economic model of the state, consisting of two types of con-stitutional extremes: the absolute state and the democratic state. We ask herein how that model may be reconciled to G. Mosca and Pareto’s theory of the ruling class, with which De Viti de Marco agreed. Finally, we analyze his political writings in order to reconstruct his interpretation of collusion, rent seeking and “clientelism”, i.e., the redistribution of extracted rent, which takes place in the form of discretionary allocations of public jobs, public contracts and other corporative favors. Collusion is the use of democratic institu-tions by the ruling classes in order to gain monopoly power. While collusion is the basis of rent creation, rent extraction is not the final goal of politicians; rather, it is a means of strengthening electoral support.

This paper investigates the decision whether to centralize public policy in an economy with two levels of government. I show that centralization based on the subsidiarity principle emphasizes rather than resolves a conflict of interest between jurisdictions. The extent of the conflict of interest depends on spillovers and differences in tastes for public spending. Spending decisions are determined by negotiation between local representatives in the centralized legislature. If an agreement cannot be reached, policy is determined non-cooperatively by local governments. Results show that pooling sovereignty by the subsidiarity rinciple fails to fully internalize spillovers and may lead to a misallocation of public resources.

This paper presents a model of centralisation, where the decision to centralise policy is based on the subsidiarity principle. It shows how and when strategic delegation incentives facilitate the misallocation of public goods. We argue that less subsidiarity is desirable when decentralised governments use the subsidiarity principle to force distorted policies.

This paper considers an electoral equilibrium between two party coalitions. Each coalition is composed of two factions called activists and opportunists. Activists are interested in announcing a policy as close as possible to their ideal policy and are ready to contribute with vital electoral resources to the belonging party coalition. Opportunists are interested only in winning elections and need the activists’ contributions to enhance their party valence. Thus, the two factions of each coalition negotiate on both policy platform and activists’ contributions. Results show that, in equilibrium, the marginal rates of substitution between policy position and activists’ contributions must be the same for the two negotiating factions inside party coalitions. Furthermore, greater activism inside parties leads to policy divergence.