Municipal Consolidation and Local Government Behavior: Evidence from Japanese Voting Data on Merger Referenda

Takeshi Miyazaki

No 588, Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: The empirical literature investigating the role of key features of local governments regarding decisions on consolidation tends to use a dummy that takes 1 if adjacent local governments decide to merge. Under the estimation method, it is difficult to identify which governments have no incentive to merge. The current study presents an empirical test of decision on consolidation using voting data from Japanese local referenda that distinctively identify the preferences of specific individual municipalities. I find evidence that municipalities that could enjoy large economies of scale from a merger prefer consolidation, and large and small municipalities are likely to merge.

Keywords: Boundary reform; economics of scale; local referenda; median voter model; municipal consolidation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H76 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-ure
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:hit:hituec:588

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