Economic theorists and finance practitioners alike turn to the seminal work of Wallace E. Oates for a systematic statement of the economic principles of fiscal federalism. In this book, Professor Oates provides an overview of fiscal federalism and analyses specific problems in a selection of his most important articles and papers. This collection includes many pieces which are not readily accessible. The papers in this volume constitute a basic reference for current discussion of the evolution both of national fiscal systems and of the fiscal structure of the European Community and other supranational organizations. The range of approaches and quality of argument will ensure that the book becomes a central reference point for the continued discussion of this important topic.
Wallace Oates was a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland and a University Fellow at Resources for the Future. He received his PhD in economics at Stanford in 1965 and joined the faculty at Princeton University. He moved to the University of Maryland in 1979. He specialized in the areas of public economics and environmental economics.
His primary research interests were public finance and environmental economics. Since his first book, Fiscal Federalism (1972), he explored the assignment of functions to different levels of government in a federal system, the provision of local public goods, the design of intergovernmental grants, and the structure of local revenue systems. He worked on these matters with urban groups, the European Union, the OECD, and various federal and state agencies in the United States.
His central environmental economics interest was in the use of economic incentives for environmental management. In numerous writings including The Theory of Environmental Policy (1975, revised edition 1988), with William Baumol, he studied the design and implementation of taxes on polluting activities and systems of tradable emissions allowances. He worked on the design of regulatory programs for pollution control with the U.S. EPA, the OECD, and other federal and state agencies. He served on the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee for the EPA.