The Linear Expenditure System and the Demand for Municipal Public Services: The Median Voter Specification Revisited

Marie-Estelle Binet ()

Urban Studies, 2013, vol. 50, issue 9, 1689-1703

Abstract: Following Bergstrom and Goodman (1973), this paper contributes to the set of studies estimating demand for publicly provided goods and services. The main innovation in this paper is methodological as it uses a Stone–Geary utility function to describe median voter preferences. Unlike in previous studies, the local public expenditure function, in a (simplified) linear expenditure system, can be derived directly from the theoretical framework. The translated expenditure function provides an estimate of the minimum required local public services in each municipality. Using cross-sectional municipal data from France, it is found to be, at the most, 30 per cent of the total per capita expenditure. Compared with the specification conventionally used in the literature, linear and non-linear expenditure systems show a greater sensitivity to price and income variations and reveal a greater number of significant variables.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098012468341 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: The linear expenditure system and the demand for municipal public services: The median voter specification revisited (2013)
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:sae:urbstu:v:50:y:2013:i:9:p:1689-1703

DOI: 10.1177/0042098012468341

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().