BAILOUTS IN FEDERATIONS: IS A HARD BUDGET CONSTRAINT ALWAYS BEST?*
分析联邦制下中央与地方政府间的道德风险问题，指出硬预算约束可能因过度激励高努力而抑制社会有效投资，导致与软预算约束相反的效率损失。
This article analyses hard and soft budget constraints in a federation, where there is a moral hazard problem between the central and the regional governments. Regional governments can avoid a bailout from the center by exerting costly effort. In this setting, a hard budget constraint is not always optimal because it can provide excessive incentives for high effort, and thus discourage investment that is socially efficient. Thus, a hard budget constraint can imply the opposite kind of inefficiency that emerges under a soft budget constraint, where the common pool problem can give rise to inefficiently low effort and overinvestment.