Better alone? Evidence on the costs of intermunicipal cooperation
Clemence Tricaud
Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy
Abstract:
While central governments encourage intermunicipal cooperation to achieve economies of scale, municipalities are generally reluctant to integrate. This paper provides new evidence on the costs of integration by assessing the causal impact of integration on municipalities resisting cooperation. Exploiting a 2010 reform in France that forced non-integrated municipalities to enter an intermunicipal community, I show that the loss of autonomy over urban planning plays a key role in explaining their opposition. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that municipalities forced to integrate experienced a 12.2 percent increase in the number of building permits delivered. Additional results suggest that municipalities were resisting further urban development to avoid congestion rather than to exclude minorities or prevent housing prices to fall. Exploring the impact of integration on fiscal revenues and public services, I find that, while congestion costs appear key in understanding urban municipalities’ resistance, rural municipalities’ opposition seems mainly driven by the loss of access to local public services. Overall, these results shed new light on the tension between the potential aggregate benefits sought by governments and local negative externalities driving municipalities’ opposition.
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)
Downloads: (external link)
https://ged.univ-rennes1.fr/nuxeo/site/esupversion ... 15-b5c6-e7729256e82b (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation (2022) 
Working Paper: Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation (2021) 
Working Paper: Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation (2021) 
Working Paper: Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation (2021) 
Working Paper: Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation (2021) 
Working Paper: Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation (2021) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tut:cccrwp:2019-12-ccr
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CREM (UMR CNRS 6211) - Faculty of Economics, 7 place Hoche, 35065 Rennes Cedex - France
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy CREM (UMR CNRS 6211) – Faculty of Economics, 7 place Hoche, 35065 RENNES Cedex. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by GERMAIN Lucie ().