Abstract

Over the last years, scholars looked at the decentralization of competences as a possible solution for several issue of public finance. Despite the development of a new branch in fiscal federalism theory (the so-called Second Generation Theory), the homogeneity of preferences at local level still represents one of the main assumption in this literature. This hypothesis allows assuming that a local allocation of public services minimizes the welfare losses that a central allocation could generate. The present contribution tries to underline how the homogeneity of preferences continues to represent a central topic in fiscal federalism theory, finding in the information issue a kind of "trait d'union" between them. Moreover, by means of an empirical analysis on the Italian case, we will try to analyze if individual attitudes towards a public management of local ser- vices present a greater heterogeneity at macroregional (NUTS1) or regional (NUTS2) level.