How does municipal policy affect state and local actions? Evidence from land conservation spending

Corey Lang, Patrick Prendergast and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz

Resource and Energy Economics, 2018, vol. 54, issue C, 23-36

Abstract: Understanding responses to government action is critical for developing efficient policy. In the context of land conservation, this paper examines whether municipal policy has a crowding-in or crowding-out effect on neighboring municipalities’ actions and state government actions. Importantly, we focus on municipal conservation referendums, which allow us to use a regression discontinuity framework for causal inference. Using data from Massachusetts and New Jersey, our findings suggest municipal conservation decisions have no effect on neighboring local governments’ or the state’s conservation activity.

Keywords: Local public finance; Open space; Regression discontinuity; Voting; Referendum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H41 H73 Q24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:resene:v:54:y:2018:i:c:p:23-36

DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2018.06.001

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