Piling On: Multilevel Government and the Fiscal Common‐Pool

Christopher Berry

American Journal of Political Science, 2008, vol. 52, issue 4, 802-820

Abstract: This article discusses the common‐pool problems that arise when multiple territorially overlapping governments share the authority to provide services and levy taxes in a common geographic area. Contrary to the traditional Tiebout model in which increasing the number of competing governments improves efficiency, I argue that increasing the number of overlapping governments results in “overfishing” from the shared tax base. I test the model empirically using data from U.S. counties and find a strong positive relationship between the number of overlapping jurisdictions and the size of the local public sector. Substantively, the “overlap effect” amounts to roughly 10% of local revenue.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00344.x

Related works:
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:wly:amposc:v:52:y:2008:i:4:p:802-820

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().