On the Number and Size of Nations / Alberto Alesina, Enrico Spolaore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alesina, Alberto.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Spolaore, Enrico.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w5050.

NBER working paper series no. w5050

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political participation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1995.

Cambridge, Mass. : National Bureau of Economic Research, 1995.

Summary:

This paper studies the equilibrium determination of the number of political jurisdictions in different political regimes, democratic or not, and in different economic environments, with more or less economic integration. We focus on the trade off between the benefits of large jurisdictions in terms of economies of scale and the costs of heterogeneity of large and diverse populations. Our model implies that: i) democratization leads to secessions; ii) without an appropriate redistributive scheme (which we characterize) in equilibrium one observes an inefficiently large number of countries; iii) the equilibrium number of countries is increasing in the amount of economic integration. We also study the welfare effects of economic integration and free trade when the number of countries is endogenous.

Notes:

Print version record

March 1995.