IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ide/wpaper/2354.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Rawslian Principle and Secession-Proofness in Large Heterogeneous Societies

Author

Listed:
  • Dreze, Jacques
  • Le Breton, Michel
  • Weber, Shlomo

Abstract

This paper examines a model of multi-jurisdictional formation considered by Alesina and Spolaore (1997) and Le Breton and Weber (2003), where the distribution of individuals is given by Lebesgue measure over the (finite or infinite) interval. Every jurisdiction chooses a location of a public good and shares the cost of production among its residents. Each individual covers transportation cost to the location of the public good, and contributes towards the production of the public good. We consider a notion of a secession-proof allocation where no group of individuals can make all its members better off by choosing both a location of the public good and a cost-sharing mechanism among its own members. We show that if the society's population is distributed over the real line , the only secession-proof allocation is Rawlsian, which equalizes the utilities of all individuals in the society. In the case of bounded support, we show that there is a degree of approximation to the Rawlsian solution that reconciles the secession-proofness and the weakened Rawlsian principle.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Dreze, Jacques & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2004. "The Rawslian Principle and Secession-Proofness in Large Heterogeneous Societies," IDEI Working Papers 283, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    • Handle: RePEc:ide:wpaper:2354
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://idei.fr/sites/default/files/medias/doc/wp/2004/rawlsian.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Enrico Spolaore, 1997. "On the Number and Size of Nations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1027-1056.
    2. Michel Le Breton & Shlomo Weber, 2003. "The Art of Making Everybody Happy: How to Prevent a Secession," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 50(3), pages 1-4.
    3. Mark Pauly, 1970. "Cores and clubs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 53-65, September.
    4. Haimanko, Ori & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2004. "Voluntary formation of communities for the provision of public projects," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-34, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shlomo Wever & Alexei Savvateev & Michel Le Breton & Anna Bogomolnaia, 2005. "The Egalitarian sharing rule in provision of public goods," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 8(11), pages 1-5.
    2. Anna Bogomolnaia & Michel Breton & Alexei Savvateev & Shlomo Weber, 2007. "Stability under unanimous consent, free mobility and core," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(2), pages 185-204, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Drèze, Jacques & Le Breton, Michel & Savvateev, Alexei & Weber, Shlomo, 2008. ""Almost" subsidy-free spatial pricing in a multi-dimensional setting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 275-291, November.
    2. Dreze, Jacques & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2007. "Rawlsian pricing of access to public facilities: A unidimensional illustration," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 759-766, September.
    3. Dreze, Jacques & Le Breton, Michel & Savvateev, Alexei & Weber, Shlomo, 2006. "0.19% Subsidy-Free Spatial Pricing," IDEI Working Papers 423, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    4. Ori Haimanko & Michel Breton & Shlomo Weber, 2007. "The stability threshold and two facets of polarization," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 30(3), pages 415-430, March.
    5. Thierry Madiès & Grégoire Rota-Grasiozi & Jean-Pierre Tranchant & Cyril Trépier, 2018. "The economics of secession: a review of legal, theoretical, and empirical aspects," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 154(1), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Haimanko, Ori & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2005. "Transfers in a polarized country: bridging the gap between efficiency and stability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(7), pages 1277-1303, July.
    7. Savvateev, A., 2013. "Coalitional Stability of a "Bipolar World"," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 10-43.
    8. Alexei Savvateev & Anna Bogomolnaia & Michel Le Breton & Shlomo Weber, 2005. "The Egalitarian Sharing Rule in Provision of Public Projects," Working Papers 2005.39, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    9. Anna Bogomolnaia & Michel Le Breton & Alexei Savvateev & Shlomo Weber, 2008. "Heterogeneity Gap in Stable Jurisdiction Structures," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(3), pages 455-473, June.
    10. Musatov, D. & Savvateev, A., 2022. "Mathematical models of stable jurisdiction partitions: A survey of results and new directions," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 54(2), pages 12-38.
    11. Anna Bogomolnaia & Michel Breton & Alexei Savvateev & Shlomo Weber, 2007. "Stability under unanimous consent, free mobility and core," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(2), pages 185-204, January.
    12. Vincenzo Galasso, 2020. "Market Reactions to Quest for Decentralization and Independence: Evidence from Catalonia," CESifo Working Paper Series 8254, CESifo.
    13. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts, 2016. "Political autonomy and independence: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(3), pages 461-496, July.
    14. Fidrmuc, Jan, 2015. "Political economy of fiscal unions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PA), pages 147-157.
    15. Anesi, Vincent, 2012. "Secessionism and minority protection in an uncertain world," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 53-61.
    16. Dokow, Elad & Luque, Jaime, 2019. "Provision of local public goods in mixed income communities," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-1.
    17. Anesi, Vincent, 2012. "Secessionism and minority protection in an uncertain world," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 53-61.
    18. Enrico Spolaore, 2016. "The economics of political borders," Chapters, in: Eugene Kontorovich & Francesco Parisi (ed.), Economic Analysis of International Law, chapter 1, pages 11-43, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Robert Dur & Klaas Staal, 2003. "National Interference in Local Public Good Provision," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-074/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    20. Rohner, Dominic & Esteban, Joan & Flamand, Sabine & Morelli, Massimo, 2018. "A Dynamic Theory of Secession," CEPR Discussion Papers 12398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H73 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ide:wpaper:2354. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/idtlsfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.