Experimentation in Federal Systems
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 130, No. 2, 2015
Stanford University Graduate School of Business Research Paper No. 15-15
53 Pages Posted: 12 Feb 2015 Last revised: 17 Mar 2017
There are 2 versions of this paper
Experimentation in Federal Systems
Experimentation in Federal Systems
Date Written: February 12, 2015
Abstract
We develop a model of policy experimentation in federal systems in which heterogeneous districts choose both whether to experiment and the policies to experiment with. The prospect of informational spillovers implies that in the fi rst best the districts converge in their policy choice. Strikingly, when authority is decentralized the equilibrium predicts the opposite. The districts use their policy choice to discourage other districts from free-riding on them, thereby inefficiently minimizing informational spillovers. To address this failure, we introduce a dynamic form of federalism in which the central government harmonizes policy choices only after the districts have experimented. This progressive concentration of power induces a policy tournament that can increase the incentive to experiment and encourage policy convergence. We compare outcomes under the different systems and derive the optimal levels of district heterogeneity.
Keywords: Experimentation, federalism, decentralization, free-riding, tournament
JEL Classification: D78, H77
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation