It is often argued that the use of distortionary taxation lowers the optimal provision of public goods below its optimal level in a first-best economy, which contains no restrictions on lump-sum taxation. However, this issue is usually investigated using commodity-tax models that contain no lump-sum taxes. This paper examines a many-consumer economy in which the only tax instruments are commodity taxes and a poll tax (subsidies are negative taxes). The optimal level of public good provision in this economy typically exceeds the first-best level, at least for distributionally neutral public goods.

This paper examines interregional commodity trade in a "Tiebout Economy," that is, a many-region economy with perfect labor mobility and endogenous government decision making. For a model with scale economies in public good consumption, it is shown that any equilibrium is both Pareto efficient and asymmetric: regions containing the same types of individuals and production possibilities nevertheless differ in the traded goods which they produce and the public good levels which they provide residents.

This paper examines a system of governments that finance public expenditures with taxes on mobile capital. Unlike previous research on "tax competition," expli cit consideration is given to the general-equilibrium determination o f the prices at which goods are traded between regions. The analysis identifies inefficiencies in government behavior that are not apparen t in models in which the terms of trade are exogenously given. Capita l taxation is shown to create an inefficient distribution of public-g ood outputs across regions, accompanied by an inefficient pattern of trade. A model is presented in which the chosen levels of public-good outputs differ across regions containing identical residents and pro duction possibilities.