The Impact of Decentralization on Municipalities: Evidence from the Municipal Home Rule Movement

Jessica Hennessey

Chapter Chapter 3 in Public Choice Analyses of American Economic History, 2019, pp 31-49 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The municipal home rule movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries decentralized control from the state and gave municipalities the ability to independently draft and adopt a municipal charter. Since not all states adopted home rule, and not all states that adopted home rule did it at the same time, the natural episode presents a rich ground for empirical study. There are several avenues on which to explore the effect of decentralization on outcomes. Previous research has considered the effect of decentralization on expenditures or on types of services provided. In the case of home rule, did the ability for municipalities to write their own charters and determine their own structure and functions result in different outcomes relative to municipalities who were not given the option? As much of the research in fiscal federalism deals with decentralization at the federal level, this paper serves as a nice complement as it investigates decentralization at a sub-national level and thus holds constant important country-level variables. Preliminary evidence seems to indicate that home rule had an effect both on municipal debt and on the composition of the municipal population.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:stpchp:978-3-030-11313-1_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030113131

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-11313-1_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Studies in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().