 Municipal residency laws and local public budgetsStephen Mehay and Kenneth Seiden Public Choice, 1986, vol. 48, issue 1, 27-35 Abstract: Prior research has shown that residency laws increase the productivity of municipal employees, which tends to reduce per unit operating cost. However, this gain in efficiency appears to have been lost when one considers that public employee groups tend to be ‘high demanders’ who have a greater tendency to vote in local elections and to support expenditure increases (Bennett and Orzechowski, 1983). Our results tend to provide additional evidence to support the findings of previous studies that public employee groups tend to exert a disproportionate impact on local budgetary decisions. It is also noteworthy that Hirsch and Rufolo (forthcoming) report that cities with police residency laws are characterized by lower police wages than cities without the laws. Thus, insofar as such laws do reduce per unit cost, the main benefit appears to accrue to the local bureaucracy in the form of greater output, expenditures, and agency size, not to employees in the form of higher wages, or to city residents in the form of tax relief. Because these laws also impose restrictions on employee mobility and residential choice, their overall effect may be to generate social costs in excess of their social benefits. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1986 Date: 1986 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:48:y:1986:i:1:p:27-35 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/BF00239557 Access Statistics for this article Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II More articles in Public Choice from Springer |
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