Oates, W. E. (1999). An essay on fiscal federalism. Journal of economic literature, 37(3), 1120-1149.
This paper is a selective survey of fiscal federalism. It begins with a brief review and some reflections on the traditional theory of fiscal federalism: the assignment of functions to levels of government, the welfare gains from fiscal decentralization, and the use of fiscal instruments. It then explores a series of important topics that are the subject of current research: laboratory federalism, interjurisdictional competition and ...