Local public good provision, municipal consolidation, and national transfers

Robert Dur and Klaas Staal

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2008, vol. 38, issue 2, 160-173

Abstract: We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a region comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighboring district, there is underprovision of public goods in both the city and the village. When districts consolidate, underprovision persists in the village (and may become even more severe), whereas overprovision of public goods arises in the city as urbanites use their political power to exploit the villagers. From a social welfare point of view, inhabitants of the village have insufficient incentives to vote for consolidation. We examine how national transfers to local governments can resolve these problems.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166-0462(08)00009-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Local Public Good Provision, Municipal Consolidation, and National Transfers (2007)
Working Paper: Local Public Good Provision, Municipal Consolidation, and National Transfers (2006)
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:eee:regeco:v:38:y:2008:i:2:p:160-173

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Science and Urban Economics is currently edited by D.P McMillen and Y. Zenou

More articles in Regional Science and Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().