Une analyse économique de la sécession
Résumé
The purpose of this article is to provide an economic analysis of secession. It can be viewed as an immediate successor of the works of Alesina and Spolaore (1997), Berkowitz (1997) and Bolton and Roland (1997). We use a spatial representation of the population to study the heterogeneity of individual's preference in public goods. In a two-region country, the size has two antagonist effects on individual utility. On one hand, as the country grows, the individual fiscal pressure goes down. And on the other hand, more and more people feel frustrated by the production of public good in an unique place, the capital. Without revenu disparities, we show the center prefers the secession. A normative view ends this analysis. We conclude that unilateral secession reduces the two-region welfare.